Ten Years to Make and Break a Villain
by Random Frequent Flier Dent
Summary: This is the story of the ten years in which Bela Talbot went from victim to villain. Because not everything is black and white. In the case of Bela, everything is in shades of grey.
1. Chapter 1

Ten Years to Make and Break a Villain

**I've always liked the character of Bela. I know I'm in a minority here, but it has always seemed to me that Bela's character had so much depth that was not explored thoroughly on the show. And I don't think they ever mentioned Abby's full name on the show, so I made one up.**

**Disclaimer: Don't own it.**

Chapter One

At fourteen Abigail Josephine Moncrieff killed her parents.

She wasn't even sure that she had done it until she got the news that her parents had been killed in a car crash. And then she knew. That little girl she'd spoken to on the swings had told her the truth.

"I didn't know," Abby whispered.

But she had known. That little girl had not been a little girl at all. That little girl had been… something unnatural. She'd known the second that girl's eyes flashed scarlet. And when they sealed the deal with a kiss—just a brief, very light peck on the lips, so quick that Abby hadn't even been sure that it had happened.

_I could take care of them for you. And it won't even cost you anything_…

And then the shivers traveled down Abby's spine, because she was just remembering the second part of the little girl's offer.

…_for ten…_

"…whole years." Abby muttered.

She was sitting in an office, dreary and grey, like all the offices she had been in for the past few days. She'd been to the policeman's office, to the social worker's office, even to the child psychologist's office.

Anyone who was watching her wouldn't have denied that she _needed_ a psychiatrist. She'd been talking to herself; Abby hadn't even been aware that she was thinking out loud.

"Abby?"

With a start, Abby looked up. She'd been staring fixatedly at the oaken desk for the past hour-and-a-half, staring without really seeing, lost in her own thoughts. She glanced up at the woman with the too-sympathetic expression and the too-understanding smile.

She didn't understand at all.

"Abigail Moncrieff?"

"Yes." Abby cleared her throat; her voice was raspy from lack of use. "Yes?"

"I'm Rhonda Dent. I'm a social worker who's just been assigned your case."

"Oh." And how was she supposed to respond to that? Congratulate her, thank her, or what? Abby settled with a nicely ambiguous, "I see."

"I know you must be feeling very sad right now…"

…but Abby wasn't. Abby was feeling scared, guilty, elated, and freed; a whole myriad of mixed emotions, but sadness wasn't one of them. Her parents were dead. Her parents were _dead_. Happiness, rushed and unexpected, suddenly welled up in Abby's chest. Her mother, useless and docile, turning a blind eye to all that her father had ever done to her. Her father, her father, who hit her in the day and did unspeakable things to her at night. They were dead. They were _dead_. In that moment Abby didn't care about _ten whole years_. It didn't matter, whatever that strange little girl meant didn't matter. Whatever the consequences, Abby wouldn't have done it differently.

"…and I'm truly sorry for your loss. But we have to consider your situation, Abby. I've been told you don't have any family members who will take you in. Is this true?"

Abby looked up. "Yes."

The woman, Rhonda Dent, made an odd cluck-clucking sound with her tongue to indicate sympathy. "Abby, what has happened to you is terrible and unfair, but you'll get through this. We'll get through it together. Children your age who have lost their parents still go on to have happy and fulfilling lives, you know. You'll still grow up and go to university and get married and…"

Abby felt herself zone out. Her roaming thoughts landed on the inheritance. Her father had been an awful person but he'd had sharp elbows in the business world and that had brought him a huge pile of money. It was her money now. Hers. Now she could get that leather jacket she'd been too afraid to ask her parents to buy her for her fifteenth birthday.

Both Abby and the Rhonda Dent woman were startled out of their thoughts by the phone ringing suddenly. Dent leaned over the desk and picked up.

"Rhonda Dent, how may I help you?"

Ms. Dent listened intently for a few moments, and then nodded, smiled. "That's wonderful. I'll tell her now."

There was a soft _click_ and Ms. Dent hung up.

"Well, Abby, I have good news. A foster family has been contacted and they are willing to take you in. Their names are Mr. and Mrs. Hart, they have a son and a daughter, and they live in Yorkshire."

Abby grimaced. "Yorkshire?"

"Yes, Yorkshire. Is that a problem?"

Abby shrugged. She'd lived in London for her whole life, and she found Yorkshire accents a bit hard to understand, but it wasn't really a problem. Besides, perhaps it was good to get out of London Town. Change of city, change of heart?

_Dream on. You killed your parents and you're happy about it. There's no change of heart for someone like that._

"Abby?" Dent asked.

She shook herself out of her reverie. "No, no problem." She stood up; the chair creaked across the wooden floor as she did so and she winced. "When do I leave?"

Ms. Dent looked a bit surprised; Abby could understand why. A decision had just been made to shuffle her from London to Yorkshire, to stay with a new family that might or might not treat her well. Ms. Dent had probably been expecting, well, a bit of emotion, a bit of angst.

Abby's clear, impassive gaze gave away nothing.

"Tomorrow would be ideal," Ms. Dent said at last. "But if you feel it's too rushed, an allowance might be made, you could always…"

"Tomorrow sounds perfect." Abby interrupted.

Rhonda Dent gave the fourteen-year-old a calculating look. Abby felt she was being X-rayed. "Is there a problem?" Abby's voice was testy.

"Uh, no, I just…" Dent sounded taken-aback.

"Good. Where am I going to sleep tonight?"

"You can stay in my flat for the night…"

Again Abby interjected. "Then can we go? I'm awfully tired."

Silently resigned to her fate, Dent nodded and stood up. "Let's go, Abby."

Abby Moncrieff followed her out without a word.

The little demon girl's words rang out in her head again.

"_Ten whole years._"

Abby had to stop herself from screaming aloud.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

**Reviews make me happy. Hint, hint. **

Meet the Harts: forty-eight-year-old Albert Hart and forty-five-year-old Jodie Hart, a benevolent couple who liked watching _A Place in the Sun_ and eating rice pudding with cinnamon; awkward, gangly twelve-year-old Tommy Hart and the genius-level twenty-year-old Oxford student Lavender Hart whom Abby had yet to meet.

All in all, Abby Moncrieff felt as though she'd been dropped into an early sixties sitcom. She wanted out.

Albert and Jodie Hart had been told that Abby had recently been through a very difficult time and would have to be given lots of patience, understanding and sympathy. As Mr. and Mrs. Hart were currently learning the hard way, when the social workers said lots, they meant lots. They'd smothered Abby with enough of all three to last a lifetime and it didn't seem to be going anywhere.

It wasn't that Abby was misbehaving or lashing out. She was quietly pleasant at mealtimes, ate her food without complaint or compliment, said "goodnight", "good morning" and "good afternoon" and departed for her room. Every day. And she locked the door.

"Abby, open the door." Mrs. Hart said when she tried the handle and found it jammed. The woman felt her heartbeat quickening. Abby might have had a go at the sleeping pills she kept in the top drawer in there, she might be cutting herself, she might be…

"Sorry, no, Mrs. Hart."

There. No trace of anger or disrespect in the girl's voice, just a firm, civil determination. Mrs. Hart wanted to come down hard, to demand that Abby open the door, that she was in _her_ house and would jolly well do as they said, but…

"Come down when you feel like it, then, dear," Mrs. Hart heard herself saying almost meekly as she descended the stairs.

Abby closed her eyes in relief when she heard the footsteps fading away. The Harts had wondered, amongst themselves, what she could possibly be doing up there in her room. If they knew they would surely be surprised.

For Abigail Moncrieff was praying.

She had never been a religious girl, but every night she lay awake wondering about the little girl's words, wondering and wondering, turning them over and over in her mind. Every night the pressure in her chest got worse; the fear was palpable, and she felt that if she didn't get an answer soon she would explode.

_What_ was going to happen in ten whole years?

"Please, God, I… I need Your help. I know I haven't been a very good girl. But they say You know everything, so You must know why I did it. You must know that they deserved it. I don't know who that odd little girl was on the swings, but I know that she was evil and maybe I shouldn't have talked to her. But it's done now, so… please, what did she mean when she said ten whole years?" Abby paused, as though waiting for a response, but she got none and continued. "I'll be twenty-four. Is she going to come and kill me, is that it? Is that my punishment? I don't want to die at twenty-four!"

Another pause.

"I'm sorry!" Abby shouted, staring up at the ceiling as though she expected to see God there. "I'm sorry! I shouldn't have done it, I know. It was wicked. But I had to, they were ruining my life, and he was hurting me. And I don't want to die. Don't let her kill me."

But no-one replied and Abby started to cry.

What if the little girl _didn't_ kill her in ten years?

What if it was something _worse_?

Months passed and Abby turned fifteen. Mrs. Hart baked her a yellow butter cake slathered in marshmallow icing and chocolate cream. There was one big candle and five little ones.

Abby hadn't quite forgotten about the little girl and the ten years, but it was close enough. She still wasn't the ideal child, but she stopped locking herself in her room and started school. She did her homework and watched TV with Tommy and her foster parents never got any complaints from her teachers. Things were getting better. The social workers satisfied themselves that Abby was making a steady recovery.

And then it came.

Abby had read in the papers that several families in her area had suffered the loss of a loved one in what seemed like freak accidents. Wilbert Westmoreland had slipped off a chair and landed on a knife that had happened to be sticking straight up on the kitchen floor. Donna Wren had been hanging up her washing when a gust of wind blew her clean out of the window. Morris Lee had entangled his foot with a long underwater weed when swimming in the lake and subsequently drowned.

"Kind of fishy, innit?" Tommy said as he read.

Abby agreed that it was indeed fishy and went to watch TV.

That night she was attacked.

She wasn't expecting to be woken up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat only to find a wide-eyed woman with tangled mousy hair and wide, desperate eyes leaning over her. Abby didn't expect the woman to have rope-burn marks on her neck, as though she'd been strangled with a string. And she certainly didn't expect the woman to shoot some sort of bolt out of her hands at the ceiling, and then vanish.

Abby screamed as the ceiling buckled and started to collapse. On her.

She was going to _die_. It wasn't fair; didn't that girl say "ten whole years"? Why should she die now?

"Abby!" she heard frantic hammering on her door and her head jerked towards the sound. Mr. Hart couldn't open it. She'd locked it out of sheer force of habit.

Abby flung herself at the door and fumbled to open the lock. But then—and it was the oddest thing—the lock jammed. It just _stuck_. She couldn't force it open.

"I can't open the bloody door!"

She was panicking. The ceiling was caving in. How was that even possible? How could this be?

An awful groaning, splintering sound met Abby's ears. This was it. She was going to die.

_I am _not_ going to die. Not today. It's too soon._

Those words rang out as clearly in her head as though she had said them out loud. Abby turned and ran for the window.

And then she dived straight out in a crimson shattering of glass.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Abby came to slowly, like in the early hours of morning when you're still half submerged in a dream. It was quiet. Birds chattered outside.

Birds?

The last sound she had heard was the smashing of glass and her own scream as she plummeted two floors. Why were there birds?

"Abby…"

"Tommy, shush!"

"No, I think she's waking up! There, I saw her eyelids move."

Oh. That's right. She was in the hospital. Slowly nonsense resolved itself into sense and Abby opened the eyes.

White. Gleaming white walls. Soft white bed. Blinding white sunshine. And… four faces. Tommy Hart, Mr. and Mrs. Hart. And an unfamiliar face, a bespectacled young woman with freckles and intelligent brown eyes.

"Abby?" Mrs. Hart's voice was quiet. Her eyes were very red. Had she been _crying_? For _Abby_?

"Yes?" Abby's voice was hoarse. She cleared her throat and tried again. "What happened?"

"Our house fell down!" Tommy shook his floppy brown hair out of his eyes, which were wide with disbelief. "It _fell down_! Did you ever? Just like that!" He clapped his palms together for emphasis. "We ran out the front door, though. We're all alright. It was only you who thought to jump out the window without opening it first."

"The lock…" The events of the past night were coming back slowly.

"You locked the door! Mum _told_ you not to lock the door." Tommy sighed theatrically.

"Shut up, Tommy," the unfamiliar woman said, putting a hand on the twelve-year-old boy's shoulder. She smiled down at Abby. "I'm Lavender, Tommy's older sister. I'm sorry we had to meet this way."

"So am I." Abby said. She sat up suddenly. "The woman! There was a woman in my room. She was the one who made the house collapse. I saw her."

Lavender turned to her father. "Concussion?"

"A bad one," Mr. Hart said in a low voice. "Broken ribs, broken arm, cracked pelvis and multiple cuts from the glass. The doctors say she'll be alright, but she had a lucky escape."

Abby wanted to shout that she was still right there, but thoughts of that strange, awful woman distracted her. "It's not the concussion. There really was a woman there. I saw her, she jammed the lock too, so I couldn't get out."

"A woman, you say?"

The Harts all spun around, and Abby twisted around in her hospital bed to peer at the new arrival.

He was in his forties, with a serious face and a blazing grey eyes and a mop of red hair. The man was wearing a smart suit, and as he approached them he flashed a badge. MI6.

"MI6? Since when does the intelligence service come in for cases of infrastructure flaws?" Abby could hear the frown in her foster father's voice. The MI6 man gave him a smile that seemed, to Abby, almost sheepish.

"We like to be thorough. There's been a rash of strange, seemingly accidental deaths these few days and I, for one, find the fact that a perfectly sturdy home collapsed suddenly very suspicious."

"You suspect foul play?" Lavender spoke up. The MI6 agent glanced at her.

"We won't know till we investigate. Would you mind if I spoke to Abby here for a bit?" The MI6 man dropped into the seat next to Abby's bed in a way that suggested he would speak to her whether or not it was permitted by the Harts.

They exchanged shrugs and glanced. "Well, I was thinking of getting a bite to eat anyway." Mrs. Hart said, relenting. "But don't be long. The doctor says that Abby shouldn't be tired out."

The man waited until the Harts had left before turning to Abby. "I'm special agent Humphrey Appleby."

Humphrey Appleby? The name rang a bell, although Abby couldn't think where from.

"I hope you'll be better soon. But what was it you said about a woman?" His eyes were intense, too intense. Abby felt they were boring holes into her skull.

"I—never mind." Abby felt that in this case, honesty wasn't the best policy. She didn't want to be locked up in the insane asylum. Anyway, this was MI6, not Ghostbusters. What could they do? So she just shrugged. "Concussion. Seeing things that weren't there."

Appleby just looked at her. He could tell she was lying. Abby felt strangely defensive. She didn't have to tell him anything. He couldn't make her.

He stood up and paced the room a few times, agitation evident in his stride. When he finally stopped and turned to look at her, she was surprised at what he said.

"Is that a London accent, Abby? You're not from Yorkshire, are you?"

Taken by surprise, Abby said, "No, I was adopted a few months ago. My parents died in a car accident." There was no emotion in her voice.

"Tragic." There was no emotion in his, either. "Abby, this woman. Did she have marks around her neck, right there?" he touched his own.

A shiver went down Abby's spine. "There's no woman, I told you. I was—confused. Seeing things."

"There was a woman, Abby. You and I both know." His eyes were _too_ intense. Abby looked away.

"You're not MI6." she said flatly.

There was a pause. "No, I'm not." he admitted at last. "I'm someone who can help you, Abby. Let me help you."

Abby wouldn't meet his eyes. She stayed silent. Finally he sighed, scribbled something on a piece of paper and put it onto her bed.

"That's my number. If you think of anything, call me." And then he was gone.

Abby sighed out in relief.

She was discharged two weeks later and the Harts brought her back to their new rented flat.

"I have it on pretty good authority that this one isn't going to collapse," Mr. Hart said.

"I hope not." Abby said.

She had to share a room with Tommy, and that meant she couldn't lock herself in, but after what had happened she didn't feel the need to even _look_ at a lock, let alone use it. The woman might come back and…

That woman. Her second supernatural encounter. For she was now certain that the little girl had been an unholy creature of some kind. Were the two incidents related?

God, her life was weird.

But this was better than life with her parents.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

**Oh, and anyone who gets the 'Humphrey Appleby' reference is officially completely wonderfully totally awesome. **

Three days after she was discharged from the hospital, Abby was attacked again.

This time the ghost-woman or whatever she was didn't even try to make it appear like an accident. She appeared in front of everyone.

It was evening. The Harts had just finished dinner. Abby and Tommy were watching _Star Trek: the Wrath of Khan_ and snacking on pretzels. Mr. and Mrs. Hart were both reading.

It was raining. A flash of lightning, a clap of thunder, and suddenly she was just _there_.

Tommy yelled in fright and scrambled for the front door. It was locked; the lock was jammed. It was happening all over again.

"Why'd you do it?" the woman howled. She was talking to Abby; Abby knew that instinctively. This ghost—woman—demon, whatever, was after _her_.

"Get away!" Abby screamed, flinging the remote at her. "Get away and leave me alone! She said I had ten years, there's a mistake, it's only been a few months!"

"Why'd you make the deal? Stupid, stupid, you don't know what you've done!" Suddenly an invisible hand closed around Abby's throat and she gasped for air.

Mr. Hart grabbed the woman from behind and tried to wrestle her to the ground. The woman didn't even have to twitch a muscle; Mr. Hart's head snapped back and he fell to the ground, killed instantly.

Mrs. Hart was screaming hysterically. Tommy was yelling, too, and the cries were abruptly cut off. Abby didn't see what happened to them, only knew that they were dead. Terrified, Abby backed into the wall.

It was her turn next. Abby closed her eyes and waited for the end.

Then the door burst open; someone had kicked it in. And in strode Humphrey Appleby the phony MI6 agent, intense eyes somehow even more intense, clad in a leather jacket instead of the suit. He looked like some sort of crazy superhero. And he was holding a shotgun.

"Get down!" he shouted, and Abby threw herself onto the floor with no hesitation. A shot sounded, so much louder than in the films, and the woman vanished.

She was aware that she was whimpering, crouched on the floor, hands thrown over her head. She felt a hand shaking her shoulder roughly. "You alright? I told you to call me."

Abby lifted her head. "I'm fine."

"Good. We've got bones to salt and burn." He hauled her to her feet and half-dragged her through the door. That didn't make any sense to her; did he just say they had _bones_ to salt and burn?

He shepherded her into the lift and down into the car park and into a battered old Landrover. He didn't tell her where they were going as they started the engine and zoomed out of the parking lot and into the dark, dark night.

Tension sizzled in the car like a palpable force as they pulled up by a cemetery. Half-running, they approached a grave. The tombstone was simple, no fancy words, just, "Wendy Lore 1952-1979." No R.I.P or 'beloved daughter'.

Looking at that grave, Abby felt suddenly forlorn. She was shocked out of her dismay when Humphrey handed her his gun.

"You know how to handle a shotgun, Abby?"

"No, of course not, why would I—"

"It's simple. Point and pull the trigger. Here," he guided her finger to the trigger and pulled her hands into the proper grip. "I'm going to dig up this grave here. It's vitally important I do so. She'll come and try to stop me; if you see her point and shoot. If you see anything move, point and shoot. It's rock salt—it won't kill a human but it will disperse a spirit. Got that?"

Abby lifted the shotgun in affirmation and Humphrey started digging furiously with a shovel.

When the woman appeared, screaming her anger and rage at the world, Abby fired like she had done it every day of her life. When the woman materialised again, a hand's width away from her, Abby simply flipped the gun so that she was holding it like she would a cricket bat and hit the woman in the stomach. The spirit stumbled back; Abby raised the gun and shot her.

The spirit appeared for the third time; Abby started to fire, but suddenly the ghost exploded in a burst of fire. Humphrey had set the bones alight. Together, the two of them watched the remains of the ashes curl and die on the floor, and then they watched the sun rise.

The cold, watery, morning sunlight spread through the graveyard. Abby handed the gun back to Humphrey.

"Was this really your first hunt?" Humphrey asked at last.

Abby glanced at him. "If you mean the first time I ever fought something like that, then yes."

Humphrey whistled. "Then you're really something." There was a pause. "Wendy Lore hanged herself at twenty-seven years of age. Her father was mauled by some sort of wild animal, or at least that was what the medical reports said."

"What was it really?" Abby said. His tone indicated that he didn't believe a word of what the medical reports said.

"Hellhounds," Humphrey said simply. "Her father made a deal with a crossroads demon. They grant you any one wish in return for your soul. In ten years their hellhounds come for you and they drag your soul to hell."

Abby's stomach clenched and she fell to all fours, retching bile.

Humphrey knelt next to her. She felt his hand on her shoulder.

When she was finished she straightened, wiping her mouth. "Oh my God." she whispered. "_Hell_? I thought—never even—oh my God."

Humphrey's eyes were as intense as ever. "Wendy knew what had happened. She hated her father for making the deal and leaving her behind. That hate grew into madness and she killed herself. And she wouldn't move on. She stayed behind and became a spirit. She preys on a very specific kind of people, Abby. Do you know who she comes after?"

"People like me," Abby whispered. "People like her father."

"That's right." Humphrey exhaled. "So you made a deal? When?"

"This year. Few months back." Tears were falling freely now. "The demon never said anything about hell."

_Ten whole years…_

"They never do." Humphrey hesitated. "Why did you do it? What was the deal for?"

Abby said nothing, and he didn't press it. "I'd best be going. I'm not—ah—in the good books of the police, and they'll have found your foster family by now."

The Harts. Dead, because of her. Abby didn't feel any pang of guilt. All she felt was dread, for herself.

Hell. Eternity.

Humphrey turned and walked away. Abby swallowed hard and went after him. Put a hand on his arm.

"Humphrey—whatever your real name is," Abby wiped her tears away fiercely. "Teach me how to fight. Teach me how to hunt."

Humphrey sighed. "Abby, you have ten years. You don't want to spend those ten years as a hunter. Trust me."

"Teach me how to hunt so that I can defend myself from the hellhounds. I don't want to go to hell."

"You can't fight hellhounds, honey." There was a weary look in his eyes now. A sad look.

"I'll do my best." Abby said. "Just teach me the basics." Her voice was steely. No trace of the tears now. "Salt and burn. Rock-salt shotguns."

"Abby…"

"_Teach me_," her voice was a fierce whisper. "_how to hunt_. I don't _care_ what you think. I am _not_ going to hell. I want to learn how to fight them."

A shadow crossed his face, and then cleared. "Come with me."

Abby followed.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

**Now we see the introduction of the Bela we know. And look out for appearances of the main canons on the show! Starting chapter after next, the Winchesters will get involved.**

At fifteen Abigail Josephine Moncrieff became a hunter.

Humphrey—that wasn't his real name, but she never learned what it was—didn't want an apprentice. He taught her how to exorcise demons and salt and burn and he taught her how to give dead man's blood to a vampire. He taught her how to use a knife and about the different kinds of guns and how to hotwire a car. And then he left.

Abby never went back to the social workers. She just disappeared. Went off the radar. Became a hunter.

She watched the news. Apparently she was classified as 'missing'. The police thought that the same 'gang' who had killed her foster family had kidnapped her. Ignorant fools.

Her inheritance money paid for her motel fees and transport. At fifteen, she had to invent a lot of ridiculous lies to explain why she was alone in a dodgy motel without parental supervision. But soon she found out that she was really rather good at lying. She got along.

Being a hunter, however, was far from a breeze. She found jobs and tackled them with ruthless determination. She tracked demons and vampires with dogged perseverance. She was a damn good hunter. In the small network of hunters in Great Britain, Abby became well-known as a sort of prodigy. She had allies—if her youth ever aroused suspicion in some well-meaning adult, two hunters would be quickly called in to pose as her parents and back up her story until she was able to get away.

Abby hunted and she tried to forget.

At sixteen Abby celebrated her birthday with a few shots of whiskey with her hunter friends. She woke up with a roaring headache and a terrible clenching feeling in her gut that had nothing to do with her hangover.

She was sixteen. She would die and go to hell at twenty-four.

Abby was seventeen when she started charging for her services. To those who could afford it at first, and then she charged even those who couldn't. Made them feel guilty when she protested that she'd risked her life to save theirs and they really should give her a bit of money. Told them that even a hunter had to eat. Took whatever they had to give and left.

Soon she didn't even bother saving people who couldn't afford to give her more than fifty pounds. She liked working with rich people. Those who would give her thousands of pounds in gratitude. Those were her favourite kinds of clients.

Slowly but surely her group of fellow hunters started to drift away from her. Abby didn't make any effort to get them back. Perhaps they didn't see her as a hunter anymore, just a cheap mercenary for hire. It violated some sacred, unwritten, unspoken code, what she was doing. Hunters didn't charge money. Hunters didn't pick and choose their clients.

But now, at eighteen, Abby was legally of age and she didn't need any older hunters to pose as surrogate parents. She didn't need _anyone_. She _didn't_. Another year passed. Salt and burn, exorcise, ask for money, go party. End up in the hospital more than once with cuts that needed stitches.

One day, walking through a lonely road at night after a simple salt-and-burn, it hit her. Abby was nineteen years old. Twenty-four wasn't all that far away. In fact, her ten years were half gone.

Abby looked down at her shotgun and flung it as far as she could. It clattered over the worn road and off into the shrubbery surrounding it.

"I'm going to Hell, damn it. Humphrey was right. I _don't_ want to spend my last ten years as a hunter."

Abby sat down heavily by the side of the road.

This wasn't the way to live. She wasn't living like she'd die in five years. If, before all this had happened, someone had asked her what she would do if she only had ten years to live, she'd have said that she would want to live it out in luxury. Designer dresses and champagne and environment-killing cars and huge penthouse flats and diamonds and pearls. But she'd been living off a suitcase, moving from hotel to hotel (now that she was being paid, she could afford swankier establishments than cheap motels) risking her life every damn day.

Vaguely, a plan started to form in her mind.

And a name.

Bela. Bela Talbot.

**-break-**

At nineteen, Abby Moncrieff became Bela Talbot.

At nineteen, with five years left to live, Bela Talbot became a thief.

A _great_ thief.

A week after that fateful night by the side of the road Bela found herself with a shiny new ID and passport, a smart dress, dark blond hair, blue contact lenses and an attitude, in Heathrow Airport, taking the next plane to America.

The first thing she stole was a splinter of wood.

From the Spear of Destiny.

"The _Spear_ of _Destiny_? Rich, are you sure?" Bela was driving with one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding her phone to her ear. It was hard enough driving in the United States where the driver's seat was on the _wrong side_, let alone while she was being distracted by her phone, so she was driving rather badly, swerving randomly and cutting into other lanes. Well, what was a speeding fine to her?

"I'm positive," her contact said. "Only—a hunter has it at the moment."

"Oh? Who?"

"Rufus Turner." Rich said. "Ring a bell?"

"Mm, no. Where is he?" Bela narrowly avoided plowing a scooter down.

"Last I heard, Canaan. He's uh, working a case. The shard is a powerful weapon, Bells. I have no idea how he got his hands on that, but you know hunters."

Bela said, "Don't call me Bells," and hung up.

Time to pay Rufus Turner a visit.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

"That's from the Spear of Destiny?"

Rufus and two fellow hunters leaned over the insignificant-looking splinter on the table. To the naked eye it appeared as an ordinary piece of wood, but everyone in the room could feel its power. Palpable. Electric. The other hunter, a thirty-something African American man called Erik, knew this too. His question was purely rhetorical.

Rufus answered it all the same. "Uh-huh. I've got it on darn good authority. You wouldn't believe how I managed to get my hands on this little beauty."

The other hunter, Bobby Singer, looked impatient. "That don't matter, ya idjit. What matters is what we're going to do with it. In enemy hands it would be… damn."

"Ya think?" Rufus shook his head. "Demons would kill to get their hands on this critter."

"What does it _do_?" Erik asked.

"Do? It's the freaking spear of destiny, Erik! Ain't you ever read the bible? It—" Rufus never got the chance to finish his sentence, because at that moment a small, round metal thing was thrown in at the open window of Rufus's second-floor flat.

Three hunters stared at the small, round, metal thing.

"Say, that looks a lot like a—"

And then all slumped to the floor in a dead faint as white gas poured from the smoke grenade.

In about thirty seconds Bela reached the front door, produced a hairpin and jiggled it around in the keyhole until there was a soft _click_ and the door opened.

The gas had cleared, but she still coughed as she entered the room. Holding a sleeve over her mouth, she approached the table, swept the shard into a zip-lock bag and left.

Easy.

Bela left the building, hopped into her car and left town before anyone even saw her go. Smirking, she flipped open her phone and pressed a number on speed-dial.

"Reverend? I've got it."

It wasn't a real religious Reverend, either, but the leader of some random cult. Bela suspected they dabbled a bit in the darker arts. Who knew what they would make of an artifact like this? And more importantly, who cared?

"Excellent, Miss Lugosi. Three thousand dollars?"

"Five."

There was a pause on the other end. Bela tensed, her knuckles turning white on the steering wheel.

"Done. Come to rendezvous point in an hour."

Bela didn't respond. She didn't need to. She simply hung up. In two hours she was driving away again without the shard from the Spear of Destiny but five thousand U.S dollars richer.

She never did find out what they did with it. Bela had a feeling that a lot of people died. She didn't want to know. Ignorance was, after all, bliss.

Bela returned to her penthouse flat and rubbed her Siamese cat, Delilah, on her back. The cat stretched and purred. Bela had always wanted a cat, but she'd never been able to ask her parents for one. Now she had everything she wanted.

Life is short. Might as well enjoy the ride, yeah?

She tried to. She really did. All this money, she had everything. Everything.

And she had four years left to live.

Bela closed her eyes and ran a hand through her long blond hair. It wasn't fair. One little mistake—she'd never have done it if her father hadn't hurt her—she never would have done it if she hadn't known—that bloody crossroads demon.

"I need a drink," she muttered and went over to her wine cabinet. In the midst of pouring herself a glass of claret, she crossed over to the kitchen sink, poured it away and then drank straight from a bottle of beer. She gulped it like it was orange juice, until there was none left, then shrugged and got herself another.

And then she was crying.

She always was a tragic drunk. Bela swallowed the dregs of another bottle of beer and stifled choking sobs.

_It—wasn't—fair_.

Everything that had happened in her life. Her father abusing her. The crossroads demon tricking her into making a deal and sacrificing her soul. The vengeful spirit attacking her and killing her foster family. Becoming a hunter. Becoming Bela.

Becoming _Bela_.

In that moment she hated herself and everything she had become.

So what was she going to do about it? Being Bela, she would do as she always did. She would go on, earning money in the lowliest way possible and spending it lavishly to make herself happy.

"Mew."

Delilah the cat rubbed herself against Bela's leg. Bela smiled despite herself.

"You're my only friend in the whole world, you know that, Del?"

Delilah licked Bela's ankle and then sloped off.

Alright, pity party over. Bela got herself a cup of black coffee, splashed cold water on her face and reapplied her makeup. Then she called her informant.

"Rich. It's Bela. Any other juicy money-earning artifacts for me to steal?"

"Geez, Bells, you only just sold that splinter from the Spear and you want something else?"

Bela ground her teeth. Rich was annoying but he was a wonderful source of intel, so she didn't get on his case about it. "Do you have something or don't you?"

"Um, well, there's this vial in India that can turn any liquid in it to silver nitrate…"

**-break-**

The silver nitrate vial turned out to be a hoax. Bela had traveled all the way to India, fought her way through a gang to get her hands on it and when she discovered that it was fake she shot the perpetrator of the hoax. In the shoulder, of course. Bela hadn't yet fallen so far that she would kill randomly.

She got back to America and decided that she needed an alternate income. Rare artifacts just didn't grow on trees.

One day later, after she'd gotten over the jet-lag, Bela was sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor of a rich old woman's bungalow conducting a séance. Bela _knew_ how to conduct séances, but this time she was deliberately doing it wrong. She didn't really want the spirit of Madam Levine's deceased husband showing up—she just wanted Madam Levine to do it.

The woman in question was clasping her hands hopefully as Bela "channeled" her dead husband. After Bela, under a new alias, Alex, had finished spouting a whole lot of soppy nonsense the tearful old woman pressed a huge wad of bank notes into her hands.

Bela had to stop herself from screaming in glee.

It wasn't all that _bad_, what she was doing, or at least that was what she said to herself as she made her way to her car, running her thumb through the fresh bank notes and feeling elated. After all, she'd given that woman comfort. And _that_ was real.

Who cared, anyway?

Bela jumped into her car and zoomed off, utterly disregarding the speed limit. After all, a fine was absolutely nothing to her.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

When Bela finally left twenty-three behind her and entered her final year, she didn't cry. The sickening dread at the pit of her stomach even eased a bit. After all, it would be over soon. One way or another, she was going to hell. And what hell could be worse than the hell she was living? The hell of waiting. The agonising hell of knowing she was headed downstairs. Headed for a cliff.

A line from a song suddenly sprang into her mind.

_In the free fall, I will realise I'm better off when I hit the bottom_.

A few days after her final birthday before the end, Bela came to hear of a rabbit's foot. A real, genuine rabbit's foot that made people lucky if they touched it. The unfortunate bit? When the owner lost the foot, their luck would turn and they'd die within the week.

She left out that last bit as she called a very rich, fairly psychotic buyer. Luke Lestrade.

"Lucky? You mean all my stocks would hurtle up? My enemies would suddenly contract cancer and die?"

_An unpleasant fellow. Not unlike me_. "And more."

"Get me the thing, Lugosi. I don't care how much you want for it, just get me it!"

_Poor grammar, too_. "Consider it done," Bela said, and hung up.

She exhaled as she replaced the receiver. Bo-ring. She wasn't going to do the dirty work on her own; no, she'd progressed far beyond that. Besides, John Winchester's supernatural toxic dump more likely than not had a great deal of booby traps. Bela didn't want to go before her time. Tapping her fingers on the arm of her sofa, she picked up the receiver once more.

"Grossman. It's Lugosi. I've got a job for you."

**-break-**

Bela waited for her hired help to return the rabbit's foot to her. In the end, she decided that either they'd been killed by John Winchester's traps or they'd somehow discovered what the foot did and decided to keep it for themselves.

Damn it. _This one was my fault, I should've gone to get it myself… _Never mind, even a difficult situation like this could be remedied. Bela took her gun, slipped it into her handbag and went out.

They weren't hard to locate. Bela found one of them in his flat, drinking himself to distraction. The door wasn't locked.

Pink-eyed and sallow-faced, Grossman looked from Bela to the gun she was aiming at his head.

"Whaddya want?"

"You know full well what I want. _Where's the rabbit's foot_?" her voice was almost a snarl as she resisted the temptation to pull the trigger.

The man hiccoughed. "Wayne's dead, Lugosi. Freaking foot killed 'em." In a sing-song voice, he added, "_He's dead, Jim_!"

The sci-fi reference going past her, Bela said, "He opened the box, then? Touched it? Then he deserved to die. It's this little thing called Darwin's Theory. Where's the thing now?"

"Took it, didn't they?"

Bela whacked Grossman on the side of his head with her pistol, taking care not to use enough force to knock him out or kill him. He grunted and fell from his chair, colliding heavily with the floor. "_Who took it_?" No doubt about it now, that was definitely a snarl.

"Two guys, one of 'em touched the foot! I don't know who they were, I didn't ask their names while we were in a gunfight!"

Bela aimed a swift kick at his ribs and stormed from his flat. The idiot.

Back to her own flat now. All this running around was getting on her nerves. With a year left to live, she didn't want to waste time cleaning up Grossman's messes, but what choice did she have? With some difficulty due to the fact that her fingers were trembling with frustration, she took down the Ouija-board she kept propped up on her wall and initiated a conversation with the spirits.

When she was finished, she poured herself a gin and tonic and swallowed it.

Sam and Dean Winchester. John's boys. She'd heard of their reputation. Damn good hunters, they were supposed to be. This was going to make her life a lot more difficult.

Still. She had been a damn good hunter, too. Now a damn good thief. And that buyer, the very rich, very psychotic buyer, wanted the foot. Bela wanted the money.

Bela stood up, found her short black wig and off she went again.

This time she was a waitress.

It was easy. So easy. With a flash of her smile and the too-tight outfit, both Winchester boys were driven to distraction as she spilled coffee deliberately, mopped it up, and surreptitiously slipped her hand in Sam Winchester's pocket and pulled out the rabbit's foot wrapped in a serviette. The curse would only be transferred if she came in physical contact with it, so she took care never to touch it.

As she left the diner, she pulled off that hot, itchy wig and discarded it in a dumpster, a smirk on her face as she let her long blond hair out of the bun she'd piled it into in order to fit the wig over it.

Mission accomplished.

She returned to her flat and celebrated her victory with some ice wine. Then the phone rang and she picked up.

"Luke?" Her buyer.

"Lugosi, when I told you to get me the thing you said, 'consider it done', am I wrong?"

"Uh—" Bela thought back to the conversation. "Suppose I could've." It was the sort of thing she said quite often. "Your point?"

"That was days ago. No call, no foot, no luck, nothing." Snarky man. Bela felt she could shoot him.

"There were complications. I've got it now, though. Don't _worry_, I'm good at what I do." she took another gulp of ice wine.

"Good, eh? I think not. But it's true that you've never let me down in the past, so…" a deep breath on the other end of the phone. "I'll give you one mil for the lucky charm."

Bela's blood boiled and she stood up, pacing her flat like a feral animal. Her left hand clenched involuntarily into a fist. "You will, will you? Because you shook on one-point-five!"

"You're damn lucky I'm only deducting half-a-million!" Soft hyperventilating from Luke. It appeared he was as agitated as she was, and he was prone to artery clogging. Well, if he dropped dead from a heart attack she'd cheer. Only after he'd paid her, though.

"Well, maybe I should just take it somewhere else!" Bela knew she probably wouldn't be able to get a buyer at such short notice, but Luke didn't know that. And Bela was aware that he really, really wanted the lucky rabbit's foot.

"Don't be stupid, girl. You don't wanna mess with me. I could have my men track you down and kill you for talking like that to me."

Bela saw red. "Don't threaten me, Luke. Despite your reputation, you don't scare me." And he didn't. Bela was going to hell in a year, she wasn't going to be frightened by a fat man's threats.

There was a pause. Bela waited.

"One-point-five, then." He said grudgingly.

Bela released the breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. "Well, I'm glad you see it that way. I'll meet you at the airstrip in an hour." Not bothering with a good-bye, Bela hung up.

Rolling her eyes, Bela picked up a pair of tongs which she used to pick up the rabbit's foot. Holding it at arm's length and eye level, she examined it closely. It looked ordinary, just a fake toy found in a joke shop, but she knew all too well what it was capable of. The sooner she got a juicy sum for it and got rid of it the better.

Her cat, Delilah, hissed suddenly.

Bela spun around. Delilah was a most insightful animal—that was why she'd purchased a Siamese cat—and Bela opened her wine cabinet to retrieve the gun she had hidden inside. Cautiously, all senses on alert, she moved forward.

The burglar alarm system let out a series of beeps. Glancing at it, she saw a yellow post-it note pasted to the corner of the alarm.

_Turn around_.

Biting back a gasp, Bela whirled around, gun at the ready, finger on the trigger.

And she saw a gun aimed right back at her. And wielding the gun…

Dean Winchester.

"You left without your tip." he said. And Bela knew she was in trouble.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

**Note: And to answer a question, yes, this story is going to follow the same route as the show. It just started a bit earlier. **

Bela's arm was starting to ache from holding the gun up, but she daren't lower it. Dean Winchester… damn, she'd never expect him to come after her _here_… curse her and her arrogance, so sure she'd already won that she'd never thought of this possibility. And it was his brother who was cursed now with bad luck… and who knew what he'd do for his brother?

A lot. That was what he'd do for Sam.

"You're gonna give it back." Dean said. Cocky and sure of himself, but below that exterior she sensed a low hum of urgency, agitation. Of course. Any longer and Sam might trip over a wire and break his neck and die.

Bela forced herself to laugh, a nervous chuckle. "Sweetie. No, I'm not."

"Yeah. We'll see." There was an undertone of anger in his voice now, cleverly masked. This boy was a damn good poker player. "Bela, right?"

"That's right." Her arm was about to fall off. "Dean."

"You know the thing is cursed, don't you?" he asked. Surely his arm was hurting him too, but he showed no sign of it. Bela had to admire that.

Bela skated over the question. "You'd be surprised what some people would pay for something like that."

"Really?"

"There's a lucrative market out there. A lot of money to be made. You hunters, with all those amulets and talismans you use to stop those big, bad monsters—any one of them could put your children's children through college."

His gaze shifted, oh-so-subtly. Disgust. "So. You know the truth. About what's really going on out there, and this is what you decide to do with it? You become a thief?"

Bela corrected him. "I procure unique items for a select clientele."

"Yeah. A thief." Dean was unimpressed.

Bela's smirk widened. "No. A great thief."

There was silence for a few moments. They circled, neither blinking or lowering their weapons. Dean exhaled. Bela exhaled too.

Finally Dean decided to break the silence. "Look, Bela. My brother. He touched the foot. And when you took it from him, his luck went from…"

Bela interrupted, faking boredom. "I know how it works."

Hope flickered briefly in Dean's green eyes. "So then you know he's gonna die unless we can destroy it."

We. He said we. How ludicrous. Bela faked sympathy, furrowing her brow. "Oh." Pretended to consider. "You can have the foot."

Dean's eyebrows shot up.

Bela broke out of her pretense. "For one-point-five million."

Dean snorted. "Nice. Yeah. I'll just call my banker. How'd you even find the damn thing? Stuck in the back of some storage place in the middle of nowhere?"

Bela flicked her gaze briefly to the Ouija-board she had mounted on her wall. Dean, a sharp hunter, followed her eyes and comprehension drew.

"I just asked a few of the ghosts of the people it had killed. They were very attuned into its location."

The spark of disgust in Dean's eyes was rapidly growing into an inferno. "So you're only out for yourself, huh? It's all about number one?"

Bela immediately felt defensive for no good reason. It was true; she _was_ only out for herself. Had been for some years now. But she was going to hell anyway. There was no reward for good behavior. Why _shouldn't_ she look out for number one?

Besides, he was one to talk… "Being a hunter is so much more noble? A bunch of obsessed, revenge-driven sociopaths trying to save a world that can't be saved?"

Dean snorted again. "Oh, aren't you a glass half-full."

Bela shrugged. "We're all going to hell, Dean." In her case it was really true. "Might as well enjoy the ride."

Dean's eyes flicked from the door to her again and back to the door. A sense of foreboding rose inside her. He was planning something—this darn hunter had a plan up his sleeve, and he'd act at any time. Bela, if possible, grew even more tense.

"I actually agree with you there. Anyhoo, this has been charming, but look at the time. Oh, and this?" Dean whipped out something from behind his back. Bela squinted at it for a second before she realised, with horror, what it was.

_The rabbit's foot_. How… when… how…

_Damn hunters_!

All she could do was gape as the smirk melted off her face.

"Looks like you're not the only one with sticky fingers. If it's any consolation, I think you're a truly awful person." He turned and dashed to the door.

Bela fired, truly intending to hit him in the back and kill him. But no such luck—the shots ricocheted off the walls and bounced about the room. Out of instinct, she threw herself forward to avoid being killed by her own bullets. What an undignified way to die that would be.

"See ya!" Dean shouted as he bolted.

Slowly, Bela stood up and stared at the empty doorway.

The phone rang and very slowly, she picked it up.

"Luke."

"Where the hell are you, Lugosi? I'm at the airstrip."

Oh, damn. "There's been a complication, Luke."

"What the hell do you mean by that?"

This was going to be one lo-o-ong conversation.

**-break-**

Luke had offered her one million if she got it to him within the next hour. Feeling that it would be churlish to protest, Bela agreed and headed out, gun under her jacket, ready to kill.

Night had fallen. Bela crossed the cemetery at a brisk pace, her hour ticking past. Come on, come on… she was sure they'd be here, the Ouija board spirits hadn't been wrong yet.

She found them at last standing around a small bonfire, sprinkling things into it… a ritual. Of course. To destroy the foot. Damn, she didn't even think that was possible. They were good hunters.

Time to announce her presence. She lifted the gun.

"I think you'll find that belongs to me."

They both spun around.

"Or, you know. Whatever." She bared her teeth in a grin. "Put the foot down, honey."

Dean, confident, cocky Dean, put in his two pence worth. Stepping forward, boldly, no fear in his eyes, he said, "No. You're not gonna shoot anybody. See, I happen to be able to read people. Okay, you're a thief. Fine. But you're not…"

Bored now. In one fluid motion Bela aimed the gun and pulled the trigger. A deafening _bang_ echoed around the cemetery and Dean's brother, Sam, felt to the floor with a sharp cry. Finally she got to shoot someone.

Fear and horror and rage in Dean's eyes, he cursed. "Son of a…"

But Bela had had enough of him. Snarling, angry, she jerked the gun. "Back off, tiger. Back off. You make one more move, and I'll pull the trigger. You've got luck, Dean. You, I can't hit. But your brother? Him, I can't miss."

Her words sank into Dean. He loved his brother. Bela could see it plain as day. For a moment loneliness hit her, but she shrugged it off quickly. Now was not the time.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Dean said, outraged, glancing at his wounded brother on the floor. "You don't just go around shooting people like that!"

"Re_lax_. It's a shoulder hit, I can aim." Bela was beyond pleased that she'd pierced his cocky exterior. Brought him down a few notches. "Besides, who here hasn't shot a few people? Put the rabbit's foot on the ground. Now."

Dean flinched. "Alright! Alright. Take it easy."

He bent down, about to do as she said. And then—that next move was totally unexpected, totally and completely unorthodox. He said, "Think fast!" and threw the rabbit's foot at her.

And she fell for it. Reacting purely on finely-honed reflex, Bela reached out and caught it.

At first Bela wasn't even aware of what she had done, and she didn't know why Dean had that triumphant look on his face. And then she noticed the small, hard, furry object in her hand.

"Damn."

Dean grinned, cocky again. "Now, what do you say we destroy that ugly-ass piece of dead thing?"

Bela looked at the dead thing in her hand. It was one and a half million. It was a new designer dress and a huge shiny car and a bottle of wildly expensive champagne.

She tossed it onto the smoldering fire and watched it all go up in flames.

"Thanks very much. I'm out one and a half million, and on the bad side of a very powerful, fairly psychotic buyer." Oh right. Luke. Ah, that was a problem. Bela scowled.

Dean grinned and glanced at his brother, who was standing again, clutching his shoulder. She'd only grazed it. Bela began to wish she'd shot him in the chest instead.

"Wow. I really don't feel bad about that. Sam?"

Grinning despite his shot-up shoulder, Sam shook his head. "Nope. Not even a little."

Bela was still scowling, but she caught sight of something on Dean's jacket, the jacket he'd left on a bench. Poking out of one of the pockets were a few scratch-cards. Bela put two and two together. He had scratched those while under the lucky spell…

Not quite one and a half mil, but it would do.

Smirking, she wandered over to it, and oh-so-casually, leaned over it… plucked the cards out and slipped them into her own pocket. "Maybe next time, I'll hang _you_ out to dry."

Dean, still grinning, said, "Don't go away angry. Just go away."

Bela turned and started to walk away. "Have a nice night, boys."

With a bittersweet outcome, she drove away. Suddenly a malicious thought crossed her mind and she swerved so that she was driving past Sam and Dean. She pressed the horn several times to get their attention as she zoomed past.

Vaguely, floating after her, she heard Dean's voice.

"SON OF A…"

Bela grinned. He'd discovered the missing scratch cards.

Her cell phone rang and the grin melted off her face.

"Yes. Luke."

"You little Brit-faced runt!"

Bela hung up and switched her cell off.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

"Um, yes. I feel her very strongly here. She's telling me…"

"Yes?" The old woman's voice was eager.

Bela opened her eyes. She was sitting on the floor of the Gertrude Case's home, conducting another of her false séances, although this one wasn't for a deceased husband. This one was for a recently killed niece. Sheila. A bizarre dry-land drowning.

"A ghost ship." Bela said at last.

Gert was silent for a few moments. Bela wondered if she had gone too far, but Gert nodded and sucked in a breath. "I thought it might be. Sheila phoned me, told me she'd seen a strange ship. So… is she at rest?"

_Don't know, don't care._ "Oh, yes. Definitely. She's at peace."

Gert nodded. "Good. That's… good. I'd hate to think of Sheila, wandering…" Gert trailed off, and then smiled suddenly. "You've been such a comfort to me, Alex. Here's a little something." A wad of bills were suddenly pressed into Bela's hand, to her delight.

She said all the suitable things… _oh, I couldn't_, _it was nothing, I really can't_… and then she pocketed the money and left.

"Come back tomorrow, dear, and I'll give you the rest!" Gert called after Bela as she left.

Bela spent the rest of the day having a mighty good time, cruising about in her car and spending ridiculous amounts on things she'd never use and things she'd never wear. In the end she chatted up a large crowd of boys in a pub and then got bored and zoomed off, leaving them confused.

"I don't get it." she heard one of them say as she left.

The next day she got a call from Gertrude "Call-Me-Gert" Case.

"Ms. Case?"

"Call me Gert," the woman said automatically. "Alex, two of your friends showed up yesterday."

Bela was suitably confused. "Um. What?"

"Two of your friends. Oh, they _said_ they were law officers at first, but they admitted it later, that they were working with you. Why the secrecy, anyway?"

"Uh, they're just strange that way, I suppose…"

"So the case _isn't_ closed! Why didn't you say so? I suppose I can't give you the rest of that payment, then…"

Bela dropped the wine glass she was holding and it smashed on the expensive marble flooring.

"…I'd just really like you and your friends to find out what really happened to Sheila."

"Uh, yes, of course," Bela said, sidestepping the broken glass. "I understand. We'll finish it as quickly as possible. Of course."

"I know you will, dear."

"Ms. Case, these friends. What did they look like precisely?"

"Young fellows, good-looking, especially the taller one with the longish hair and the gorgeous hazel eyes."

Oh, and Bela definitely could think of two young good-looking fellows, one of whom was tall and had longish hair and gorgeous hazel eyes.

Damnit. The Winchesters.

"Thank you, Ms. Case. Goodbye."

"How many times must I tell you to call me Ge—"

Bela hung up and went out.

She left the flat and drove out, parking her car and striding out, feeling furious. The Winchesters. The damn Winchesters. Why'd they have to show up?

Speaking of the Winchesters…

Her eyes fall on a shiny, well-loved '67 Impala. It looked awfully familiar…

As realisation hit her, Bela's face split into a grin.

**-break-**

Bela drove the Impala (being Dean, he hadn't left his keys lying about and she'd had to hotwire it) to pay Gert a visit, assure her in person that the case would be solved soon, and then left the Impala in the tow-away zone, feeling maliciously pleased.

And even better—once she'd gotten back to the carpark she saw the Winchesters.

Dean appeared to be hyperventilating. That guy had an unhealthy connection with his car. Bela had gone through about five cars in as many years. They were just machines.

Grinning, she approached him and gave them her best sultry smile.

"The '67 Impala? Was that yours?"

Their gazes snapped towards her. A mixture of rage, horror and hostility; quite a mixed bag there.

"_Bela_," Sam said. He probably hadn't forgiven her for shooting him. Really, holding grudges wasn't an attractive quality in a man.

Faking concern, Bela frowned. "Oh, I'm sorry. I had that car towed."

Dean took a step towards her and she felt herself jump back involuntarily. He looked like he was a stone's throw away from strangling her. "You _what_?"

"Well, it was in the tow-away zone."

"No!" Dean said, voice shaking with anger. "It wasn't!"

Her face broke into a bland smile. "It was when I finished with it."

Dean looked like he'd quite like to hit her, witnesses or no. He restrained himself. "What the hell are you even doing here?"

Bela shrugged. "A little yachting."

There was a pause, and Sam's eyebrows creased. "You're Alex. You're working with that old lady."

Hunter, not moron. Bela would have to remember that in the future. "Gert's a dear old friend."

Dean snorted. "Yeah, right. What's your angle?"

He didn't have an exceptionally high opinion of her. "There's no angle." she said. "There's a lot of lovely old women like Gert up and down the eastern seaboard. I sell them charms, perform séances so they can commune with their dead cats."

Dean looked away and then back at her. He had a special way of looking at her, she realised. Like he was looking at something the cat dragged in. It was kind of like the way the group of hunters she'd once worked with when she was fifteen had started looking at her once she began hunting for profit. "And let me guess, it's all a con."

"The comfort I provide them is very real." Bela said pertly.

The disgust was mirrored in Sam's eyes. The cute one with—according to Gert—the gorgeous eyes. "How do you sleep at night?"

Ah, that was easy. Bela was asked this enough for her to have a pre-made witty comeback. "On silk sheets," she said. "Rolling naked in money. Really, Sam, I'd expect the attitude from _him_, but you?"

"You shot me!"

_Give me a break._ "I barely grazed you." Bela glanced at Dean. "Cute. But a bit of a drama queen, yeah?"

Dean ignored that. "You do know what's going on around here. The ghost-ship thing, it _is_ real."

"I'm aware. Thanks for telling Gert the case wasn't solved, by the way." Damn Winchesters always did have an interfering streak, didn't they? If it weren't for them she'd be on her way out of here with a nice stack of cash.

"It wasn't."

Was he that naïve? "She didn't know that. Now the old bag's stopped payment and she's demanding some real answers. Look... just stay out of my way before you cause any more trouble." Bela turned and started to go, and then turned around suddenly. "I'd get to that car if I were you... before they find the arsenal in the trunk. Ciao." With a wave, Bela left.

Vaguely, she heard their voices floating after her.

"Can I shoot her?" Dean asked.

"Not in public." Sam replied.

Smiling, Bela continued on her merry way.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

The phone rang. Groaning, Bela felt for her cell on her bedside table and picked up.

"Bela! Long time no talk."

Rich. Her informant. They hadn't spoken in some time; she'd gotten a lot more competent since then and didn't often request his services. "Woss the time?" her voice was slurred from sleep and the wine she'd downed before going to bed.

"Seven-fifteen. I heard you were working on that dry-land drowning case. I heard a whisper that there's been a new victim."

Bela sat up suddenly. "I'm listening."

When Rich had finished filling her in, she smiled. He did have his uses, after all. "Thanks very much. I'll be on my way there now."

"Uh, sure. Bela?"

"Rich."

"I haven't seen you in a long time."

"I'm aware, Rich. Now I really have to go."

There was a beat. "You don't wanna go for coffee sometime?"

Bela rolled her eyes. They'd been involved for about three days when she was twenty, and he'd never forgotten it, seemingly. "Rich, I really don't."

"Oh. Okay. I—I get it."

"Glad to hear it. Thanks for the juicy tip." Bela hung up and got changed.

She felt a tiny bit bad about Rich, but he wasn't much of a looker. Not really in her league. But still… he'd been a good friend. And he'd always been there.

And who really gave a damn?

Bela left her flat and found herself, half-an-hour later, at the scene of the crime, in the guise of a journalist, approaching the man she assumed was the victim's brother.

"Mr. Warren?"

Red-eyed and pale-faced, his head jerked up at the sound of her voice.

"Yes?"

"I'm with the Glass Global, is it alright if I asked you a few questions?" Bela put on her best American accent. It would be a bit daft if a journalist with an American paper had a British accent.

"Um, my brother and I were night diving when we saw this ship… old yankee ship, kind of. There was a rakish topsail, and a—a barkentine rigging. And an angel figurehead on the bow."

Bela was glad she'd switched on a Dictaphone. "And then what? Do you know anything about your brother's death?"

His shoulders shook. "No. Police said that he drowned, but I don't u-understand how..."

Bela put on a show of sympathy. "I am so sorry for your loss, Mr. Warren. Now, if you could just tell me one more time about the ship your brother saw…"

And then she got sidetracked by the two scourges of her life, the Winchesters, sauntering up in smart suits and fake badges. _Curse them_. Bela hastily rearranged her disgusted expression into a false smile.

"Ma'am, I think this man's been through enough." Dean, the epitome of impassive professionalism. Damn him. "You should go."

"But I just have a few more questions!" And Bela should remember that FBI had a lot more credibility than _Glass Global_.

"No, you don't." Sam said. She gave them both dark looks that said, _This isn't over_, and walked off reluctantly.

"Sorry you had to deal with that," she heard Dean say. "They're like roaches!"

_I'll get you back for that, Dean._ She'd lost the battle but the outcome of the war was still to be determined.

**-break-**

Bela hovered around the area until Sam and Dean had finished their chat with Mr. Warren, and then approached them as they were loading shotguns into the boot of their beloved car. They'd got it back. Ah well. Win some, lose some.

"I see you got your car back," she said, by way of greeting.

Dean paused in his work. "You really wanna come near me when I got a loaded gun in my hands?"

Loaded with rock salt, probably. "Now, now. Mind your blood pressure. Why are you even still here? You have enough to I.D. the boat."

"The guy back there saw the ship," Sam said in a '_duh_' tone of voice. Bela didn't see the relevance.

"Yeah? And?"

Still in the tone that suggested that he was talking to a backward six-year-old, Sam said, "And he's going to die, so we have to save him."

Bela had forgotten that she was dealing with hunters. Of course they'd try to save him. That was what hunters did. That was what she'd have done at fifteen years old. "How _sweet_."

Dean flared up. "You think this is _funny_?"

_Oh, hun, I think it's hilarious._ "He's cannon fodder. He can't be saved in time and you know it."

"Yeah, well, see, we have souls, and we're gonna try." Dean turned back to the boot of his car. Dismissive. An oh-so-subtle hint that she should go.

Bela didn't. "Well, I'm actually going to find the ship and put an end to this. But you have fun."

"Hey, Bela, how'd you get like this, huh? What, did daddy not give you enough hugs or something?" Dean scowled at her, his green eyes flashing.

That hit home. She blanched. If only he knew. If only he _knew_ that she had had the opposite problem.

_She's thirteen years old. She hears the key turn in the lock and she knows with a sinking feeling in her gut that her father's home. Abby runs to her room and closes the door, as if that will help. There's no lock on her door. Her father smashed it in years ago so that she'd never be able to lock him out. Heart thudding, tears falling silently, she lies on her bed and pulls the cover over her head. Her door creaks open, quietly, and her father enters. Abby closes her eyes. She's physically capable of defending herself but mentally she's helpless. Abby lies there and waits for it to be over._

Flash back to the present day. Bela grasped for a witty comeback.

"I don't know." She did know. "Your daddy give you enough?" Bela drew herself up to her full height; her eyes glinted. "Don't you _dare_ look down your nose at me. You're not better than I am."

Dean's lips quirked very slightly upward in an ironic smile. "We help people."

"Come on. You do this out of vengeance and obsession. You're a stone's throw from being a serial killer. Whereas I, on the other hand, I get paid to do a job and I do it. So, you tell me—which is healthier?"

There was silence for a few moments in which all three fumed.

"Bela, why don't you just leave?" Sam said. "We've got work to do."

"Yeah. You're zero for two. Bang-up job so far." Bela turned and walked off.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

**Note: hey, lovely readers, sorry for the long-ish hiatus but my school suddenly decided to spring a load of tests and projects and I don't have much time for writing. Still, reviews could possibly motivate me to forget the projects temporarily in favour of my fic? *hint hint***

Bela went back to her flat and IDed the ship.

It wasn't easy. There were about a hundred and fifty ships in this area, and although the ship described by Mr. Warren was quite distinctive, it still took four hours and about seven cups of coffee before Bela got a positive identification.

It was late by that time, so she went to bed.

She woke up early and drove back to the place where she suspected Sam and Dean were frequenting. There weren't any suitably dodgy motels in the relatively high-class area where they were hunting, so Bela suspected that they might be camping out in some abandoned house. She wasn't wrong. It didn't take long to find the house that the Winchester brothers were staying in.

Bela rang the doorbell and waited.

Dean opened the door and she went in without an invitation. "Dear God," she breathed in mock incredulousness. "Are you actually squatting?"

No response. Not that she'd expected one.

"So. How'd things go last night with Peter?"

Again no response, but Bela could read what had happened in their faces. "That well, huh?"

"If you say 'I told you so', I swear to God I'll start swinging," Dean growled.

She _had_ been about to say 'I told you so', but she didn't want to get into a fistfight. She knew that when Dean said he'd start swinging, he meant it. "Look, I think the three of us should have a heart-to-heart."

"That's assuming you have a heart," Dean quipped.

"Dean, please. I'm sorry about what I said before, okay?" No, she wasn't, but she wanted to get the job done and she couldn't if they kept squabbling. "I've IDed the ship." Bela unzipped a slim black folder and drew out some documents.

Dean shot Sam a look. Sam looked chastened. Evidently he'd been trying to do just that and failed.

"It's a merchant sailing vessel. Quite a colourful history. In 1859 a sailor was accused of treason. He was tried aboard the ship and hanged. He was thirty-seven." She put the documents on the table.

"Which would explain the thirty-seven year cycle," Sam said.

"Aren't _you_ a sharp tack," Bela said snarkily. "There's a photo of him somewhere…" she found a black-and-white photograph slid in between two sheets of paper. "Here."

Sam and Dean both squinted at it. "Isn't that the guy we saw last night?" Dean said.

"You saw him?" Bela said sharply. Probably when they were trying and failing to save Mr. Warren.

Dean nodded. "Yeah. That's him. Except he was missing a hand."

"His right hand," Yes, that made sense.

"How'd you know?" Sam asked.

Bela pointed to a paragraph on one of the documents. "The sailor's body was cremated, but not before they cut off his hand to make a hand of glory."

Dean sniggered. "A hand of glory. I think I got one of those at the end of my Thai massage last week."

Not amused, Sam said, "Dean, the right hand of a hanged man is a serious cult object. It's very powerful."

"Well, so they say," Bela said.

"And officially counts as remains." Dean said. That was all hunters thought about, seriously.

"But still," Sam said. "None of this explains why the ghost is choosing these victims."

Bela stood up. "I'll tell you why." she said. "Who cares? Find the hand, burn it, and stop the bloody thing."

Dean shook his head. "I don't get it. Why are you telling us all this?"

"Because I know exactly where it is," Bela said. "At the Sea Pines museum. But I need help."

Sam and Dean exchanged a look. "What kind of help?" Sam said warily.

**-break-**

Bela drummed her fingers on the table impatiently. She'd spent about fifteen minutes teasing and curling her hair before collecting it into a loose bun, and then changing into a low-necked tight-fitting dress. Sam had left a long time ago. Dean was still getting ready.

Annoyed, she called up the stairs. "_What_ is taking so long? Sam's already halfway there…" A sly, almost mischevious look crossed Bela's face. "With his date."

Dean's voice floated down the stairs. "I'm _so_ not okay with this."

Bela groaned. "What are you, a woman? Come down already!"

Slowly, agonisingly slowly, Dean came down. Bela's breath caught in her throat involuntarily. He looked _good_. No, he looked _fantastic_, in that tux… Bela had never thought Dean would look good in a tux.

"Alright, get it out," Dean grumbled. "I look ridiculous."

"Not exactly the word I'd use," Bela murmured.

"What?" Dean's ears perked up.

Bela shrugged and opened the door. "Shall we?"

"Let's go." Dean said, and off they went.

**-break-**

The party at the museum was a very posh, high-class one. Bela was willing to bet that Dean hadn't been to one in his entire life.

She thought that waiting for him to open the car door for her and help her out like a gentleman would be waiting for pigs to sprout wings and fly, so she got out herself. Swanky couples in swanky outfits were walking into the museum, and the two of them didn't stick out as they entered the museum.

Bela flashed the invitations that Gert had procured for them and she took Dean's arm.

Then she yanked his arm so hard that it almost popped out its socket. "Are you chewing _gum_?"

Dean shrugged.

"_Try_ to act as if you've lived this life before, yeah?" Bela told him, but she had the feeling that she was fighting a losing battle. This point was proved right when Dean gave her a _don't-worry-I-know-what-I'm-doing_ kind of look, sauntered over to an antique fountain, spat the gum into his hand and surreptitiously stuck it onto the stone water fountain's base.

Bela closed her eyes briefly and hoped that anyone who had seen him hadn't seen her walk in on his arm.

Dean looked extremely pleased with himself as he crossed the room back to Bela. Then they both caught sight of Sam and Gert and all else was forgotten.

Their differences suddenly forgotten, they both watched in infinite amusement as she sidled up to him and danced with her head on his chest and even—darn. This was _funny_.

Sam finally broke away from her and made his way to Dean and Bela, a dark scowl on his face. "Exactly how long do you expect me to entertain my date?" He said that word like it was poison.

"As long as it takes," Bela said silkily.

"Look," Dean said. "There's security all over the place and this is an uncrashable party without Gert's invitation, so…"

Sam wasn't buying it. "We can crash anything, Dean."

Dean's face split into a grin. "Yeah, but this is easier and it's a lot more entertaining."

Sam's expression was still dark. "You know there are limits to what I'll do, right?"

Dean nudged Bela. "Aw, he's playin' hard to get, that's cute."

Bela flashed Sam a grin and started to walk off.

"I'll want all the details in the morning," Dean whispered to Sam and followed Bela to the entrance hall.

Keeping their voices low, Bela and Dean gave the place a thorough once-over. Grim, unsmiling guards posted at every door, at the stairway, patrolling… who knew that this was a party and not a fortress?

"Private security?" Bela said softly.

"I don't think so, look at the way they're standing. They're pros." Dean muttered. "Probably state troopers in mood lighting."

"Posted at every door, too," Bela replied.

"Yeah, I don't think we're just going to be able to waltz upstairs," Dean scowled. Well, what did he expect? For it to be easy?

"What do you suggest?" Bela breathed. They already were attracting strange glances, the odd couple standing in the middle of the room having a muttered conversation.

Dean frowned. "I'm thinkin'."

"Don't strain yourself," Bela said. "Interesting how the legend is so much more than a man."

Dean glared down at her. "Hey, if you got any bright ideas, I'm all ears."

Bela smirked—a plan had suddenly popped into her head like a lightbulb. "Okay." She said, and promptly went limp; dropping to the ground like a stone. Dean quickly knelt and caught her before she hit the floor—for that she was relieved. At least he could think fast.

She felt him shake her lightly. "Honey? Honey, you all right?"

Bela didn't respond.

"Waiter, my wife has a severe shellfish allergy," Bela heard Dean say, and her heart sank. Surely he could do better than that! "There's no crab in that?"

"Uh, no, sir…"

"They are excellent, by the way," Dean said, his mouth suddenly full. Bela stopped herself from groaning.

The sound of footsteps met her ears and a new voice said, "What seems to be the trouble?"

Bela could just picture Dean's charming smile. "Ah, champagne, my wife's a lightweight when it comes to the sauce. Is there somewhere I can lay her down till she gets her sea legs back?"

Quick thinking. Bela had to approve. Soon she felt herself being lifted up, and the jerkiness of Dean's movements told her that she was being brought up the stairs.

She heard a door swing open, and soon Dean had plopped her down onto a luxuriously soft sofa.

"You think she's a pain in the neck now, try livin' with her," she heard Dean say to guard, and her eyes snapped open. "Thank you very much." He shut the door and turned to her.

"Maybe next time give me a little heads up on your plan," he groused.

Bela sat up on the sofa. "I didn't want you thinking," she said snidely. "You're not very good at that."

Dean's eyes spun—she could almost see the cogs in his head going as he wrecked his brain for a comeback.

"Oh, look at you, searching for a witty rejoinder," Bela smirked at him.

Dean gave up and said, "Screw you."

"Ooh, very Oscar Wilde," Bela returned. Why was she so good at this? Years of practise, of course. Well, enough of the juvenile trading of quips. "Room two-three-five. It's locked in a glass case wired for alarm. I hope that won't be a problem."

Dean glared petulantly and muttered under his breath as he left the room.

Bela stood up and crossed the room, examining a case of silverware. Not bad, but silver was a little beneath her.

Then she saw a pretty little model of a ship enclosed in a glass bottle. Nice. She slipped it into her purse. Wouldn't fetch much, but would look nice on her mantelpiece.

And then there was a sharp rapping on the door and she spun around.

That couldn't be Dean—he'd never knock, and besides, he'd only just gone, he couldn't be back so soon. It had to be the guard. Damn.

"Sir? Ma'am? Is everything alright?"


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

_Think fast, Bela_.

She grabbed the sleeve of her dress and pulled it down so that her shoulder was bare and it would appear, from a small crack in the door, that she was holding her dress up to cover herself. Quickly, she wrenched open the door a tiny bit and peered through.

"Hi." she said.

The guard looked bemused. "Feeling better, I see?"

"Yes, much," Bela replied. "Thank you."

"So, um, if you're done with the room?" he asked.

Bela turned and glanced behind her at nothing, giving nothing a tiny mischevious smile that the guard couldn't fail to see. "Not exactly. Could we have a few more minutes?"

The guard raised his eyebrows—he got her drift. "Yes, ma'am." And he withdrew. Bela shut the door, and for a final flourish, she let out a high-pitched giggle that he most certainly heard through the door.

"Stop it! That tickles!"

Her work done, she sat back down on the sofa and pulled her sleeve back into its proper place just as Dean slipped into the room.

"Any trouble?"

"Nothing I couldn't handle," Bela retorted, and she saw Dean produce a nasty, shriveled hand from his coat jacket. Unable to hide her eagerness, Bela stood up and stepped forward. "The hand. May I?"

Dean jumped back pertly. "No."

"It might be more inconspicuous in my purse," Bela tried vainly.

"Nice try," Dean said.

Well, it was worth a shot. "Just trying to be helpful," she said, chagrined.

Dean snorted. "Well, sweetheart, I don't need your kind of help."

Really.

They left the room and descended the stairs. Bela nudged Dean.

"What?" he growled.

"Nothing," Bela said, and slipped the hand that she'd expertly swiped into her purse, now empty of the little ship. She'd swapped the hand for the ship. Stopping the feeling of incredible triumph from showing on her face, she glanced at Dean and was glad to see that he had noticed nothing.

Upon re-entering the ballroom they saw that Sam was still being pawed by the old bag. Bela hid a grin as they approached the lovely couple.

"Well, having a nice time?" she said.

Gert gave her a sly smile. "He's delightful." Lowering her voice, she whispered to Bela, "He _wants_ me!"

Bela shot Sam a look. Although they had their differences, Bela sincerely doubted that Sam wanted Gert. "I'm going to get Gert into a cold shower," Bela said, and led the old bag away.

Bela ditched Gert quite quickly after that. She got into her car and dialed a number on her cell.

"Ron, hello, it's Lugosi. Yes. The Hand of Glory, I've got it." Bela paused for a few moments and smiled. "Two million would certainly be reasonable."

**-break-**

The exchange was pleasantly quick and soon Bela was driving away again, shuffling through a nice large pile of bills and smirking.

It was a nice night, and Bela was in a good mood, so she took a slow drive along the pier, glancing out to sea.

When was the last time she'd taken her time to admire a beautiful night, stop and smell the roses? Her life was too busy earning money and trying very hard to enjoy herself. What if enjoyment needn't be forced? What if Bela was going the wrong way about this? Maybe she shouldn't have tried so hard to force herself to be happy; maybe she should just have _lived_?

Bela sighed. Now that she would die in a few months, what was the point of trying to live? She'd just have to go on like this. But if she could go back… she'd do it all different.

Too late now.

Then she gasped.

Sailing across the sea in front of her was a ship—impossibly huge to be sailing on such a shallow bay. It was the ghost ship; her stomach plummeted.

_What_? _Why_?

How?

Why…?

Bela floored the pedal, yanked her car into reverse and drove off as fast as she could in the opposite direction. Whenever she happened to glance in the rearview mirror, the ship was still there, ghostly and translucent against the dark, dark night.

Why _her_? Damn, she'd never even bothered to find out why the ghost was choosing his victims. Never thinking for a moment that she might be next. But she knew two people who would have.

She was loathe to go to the Winchesters for help, but although she would never admit it Bela was badly frightened. She didn't want to be robbed of the few months she had left. Bela would shelve her pride for once.

Disregarding the speed limits completely, Bela arrived at the Winchesters' hideout in a daze of panic. Before she knew it she was rapping on the door and crying out in a scared voice quite unlike to her usual sultry tone, "Hello? Could you open up?"

A moment, and the door opened. Bela pushed her way in. "Just let me explain." She collapsed into a chair and fixed Sam and Dean with a half-forlorn, half-defiant glare. "I sold it. I had a buyer lined up as soon as I knew it existed."

The look Sam and Dean exchanged told her that this didn't surprise them in the slightest. _Typical Bela, we ought to have seen this coming, I knew we couldn't trust her_, their looks said, clear as day.

"So the whole reason for us to go to that Charity Ball was…?" Sam wanted to know.

Bela let out a breath. "I needed a cover. You were convenient."

Sam and Dean exchanged another of those looks. "Look, so you sold it to a buyer, just go buy it back."

Bela's mouth was dry and she had to swallow once or twice before she could continue. "It's halfway across the ocean. I can't get it back in time."

Dean's brow furrowed. "In time for what?"

"What's going on with you, Bela?" Sam chimed in. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

_Very apt_. "I saw the ship." she said in barely more than a whisper. Oh, how the mighty had fallen. How humiliating, allowing the Winchesters to see her like this.

"You what?" Dean asked, and then let out something that sounded horribly like a derisive laugh. "Wow, you know, I knew you were an immoral thieving wretch but just when I thought my opinion of you couldn't get any lower."

"What are you talking about?" Bela said.

"We figured out the spirit's motive," Sam said. He poked a finger at a black-and-white photograph of a stately-looking man in uniform. "This is the captain of our ship. The one who hanged our ghost-boy."

"So?"

"So they were brothers. Very Cain and Abel. The captain had his own brother hanged. So now the spirit's going after a very specific kind of target. People who've spilled their own family's blood. See, first there was Sheila who killed her cousin in a car accident, and then the Warren brother, who murdered their father for the inheritance, and now you."

There was a brief silence in which the words sank into Bela. _Spilled their own family's blood_… oh God, but it wasn't like that, Bela hadn't murdered her parents for the inheritance, she'd done it out of self-preservation. But then there was Sheila, who hadn't meant to kill her cousin in an accident at all. It appeared the ghost wasn't picky about the finer details.

"My God," Bela breathed.

Dean just _had_ to step in. "So, who was it, Bela? Hmm? Who'd you kill? Was it Daddy? Little sis, maybe?"

_Yes, you bloody smug hunter, it was Daddy. I killed Daddy to stop him from doing the things he did to me. You'd have done it too. If your Daddy was hurting you like that and suddenly a demon offers to get rid of him for you, get rid of both of them, you'd have said yes. So don't presume to know me, Dean, because you don't know me at all_.

Bela didn't say any of that. Instead she said, "It's none of your business."

"No, you're right. Have a nice life, or you know, whatever's left of it." Dean walked past her and started for the door. "Sam, let's go."

They were leaving? How could they? They were the good guys, or had they forgotten? "You can't just leave me here." She couldn't keep the tremor from her voice.

"Watch us." Dean said.

"Please," Bela said. "I need your help."

"Our help?" Dean rolled his shoulders. "Now how could a couple of serial killers possibly help you?"

Honestly, he was still stinging from that? "Okay, that was a bit harsh, I admit, but it doesn't warrant a death sentence!"

"That's not why you're gonna die," Sam scoffed. "What'cha do, Bela?"

Miserable and completely out of her element, Bela whispered, "You wouldn't understand. No-one did." This was useless. Standing up suddenly, she headed for the door. "Never mind. I'll just do what I've always done, I'll deal with it by myself."

Dean called, "You do realise you just sold the only thing that could save your life."

Did he think she'd forgotten, or what? Bela paused, closing her eyes briefly. "I'm aware."

"But… maybe not the only thing." This was from Sam. Dean and Bela turned around, hope in her eyes, disbelief in his.

"What?" Dean demanded.

"I have an idea," Sam replied, and Bela waited.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

Sam was setting up the ritual around the gravestone in the cemetery. Bela and Dean watched tensely. Bela was feeling disconcertingly jumpy. Any moment now the one-handed ghost might leap out at her.

"Do you really think this is going to work?" she asked, hating how pathetic her voice sounded. Almost begging for Dean to say, 'yes'.

"Almost definitely not," was the unsympathetic answer. Bela supposed she might have deserved that one.

Above them, a clap of thunder sounded. As though whatever force had been folding back the rain has suddenly given way, water abruptly started showering down on them. Within seconds, all three were soaked through. Sam and Dean seemed unconcerned, but Bela was shivering. She wasn't exactly used to this.

Dean glanced around. Was he nervous? That wasn't good. That was very bad. Very bad indeed.

"Sammy, you'd better start reading," he called.

Sam obliged, spouting some random guff in Latin. Bela could speak Latin as fluently as any hunter, but she was in a bit of state and didn't get most of what he said. She heard the names of some angels, Aziel, Castiel, some others… Bela didn't care. She was shivering and praying to a deity she knew existed but wasn't sure she had faith in.

"Stay close!" Dean shouted to Bela.

And then he was right in front of her.

Wet and bedraggled and _dead_, the ghost glared at her with hate-ridden eyes. Bela gasped. "Behind you!"

Dean spun around and fired, but too late; the ghost flung him bodily through the air and stepped towards Bela. She probably should have fought or run, but she was too terrified—all she could do was shiver in the rain and cold as the ghost laid an icy hand on her cheek.

Bela gasped and suddenly there was so much water—her lungs felt like they were suddenly full of ice. She coughed and spat out a mouthful of water, but her lungs expelled still more, and between coughs and spasms she couldn't draw in a single breath. This was what it was like to drown.

Vaguely Bela felt Dean's arm around her and he was saying something, but she couldn't hear. Then there were other voices—the ghost—Sam's séance had worked, the ghost's brother had shown up.

And then it was all over. Gasping in blessed air, Bela tried to stifle her terrified sobs but was completely unsuccessful.

She recovered admirably quickly, mostly because she was mortified that the Winchesters had seen her like that. Once she stopped feeling dizzy she stood up and simply walked off without sparing her saviours a glance. They were probably awfully insulted but she didn't care. She needed to get away.

Bela got back to her flat, stripped off her dripping clothes and chucked them out the window. Her cat, Delilah, stared at her as though asking, "You've gone quite round the twist, haven't you?"

"Shut up, Del," Bela snapped and walked into her bathroom stark naked.

She spent a long time in a hot steaming bubble bath with two helpings of bath oil and scent. The hot steam had a sickly-sweet smell from all the scented oil, just the way she liked it. Bela shampooed her hair twice, conditioned it, and lay back in the frothy water.

She didn't enjoy the bath as much as she would have liked. Whenever she closed her eyes and submerged herself in the water her mind's eye played out the scene of that ghost drowning, screaming in hate at the brother who had killed him. Bela got out of the water sharpish and dried herself, wrapping a soft white bathrobe around herself and leaving the bathroom smelling strongly of fruity bath foam.

Delilah hissed at her and stalked off, tail in the air, still offended by her earlier snappish comments. "Don't be ridiculous, Delilah, you're a bloody cat, what would you know?" Bela said to the angry animal, but Delilah took no notice.

"I'm talking to a cat," Bela muttered, and sat down on one of her plush sofas. But still, Delilah was her only true friend, and a remarkably intelligent animal at that. Bela would go as far as to say that she was very fond of Delilah.

Bela ordered pizza, a large Meat Lover with a stuffed cheese crust and mushrooms and extra olives and pickles. Forget the calories. She got enough exercise as it was to burn off all the pizza she could eat, what with going around conning people, fighting things and getting attacked and almost killed by ghosts.

Bela ate the whole pizza and then opened up a tub of Ben and Jerry's blueberry cheesecake ice cream and ate the lot. Then she went to bed. She wasn't sick, even though she got up in the middle of the night once just in case. Delilah hissed softly as though to say, "Told you so."

The next day Bela went to her safe and took out a thick wad of cash. Without even counting it, she tucked it into her bag, put on her green contact lenses and a large amount of makeup and then went looking for the Winchesters.

They were still at their rundown old house; Bela tried the door and was surprised to find it unlocked. She entered.

"You boys should learn to lock your doors. Anyone could just barge in." Bela said, sweetness and light once again.

Sam looked up from his laptop and scowled. "Anyone just did. Have you come to say goodbye or thank you?"

Businesslike, Bela walked forward and took out the stack of bills. She put it on the table. "I've come to settle affairs. Giving the spirit what he really wanted, his own brother… very clever, Sam. So here. It's…" Bela looked at the money and did some mental estimations. "Ten thousand. That should cover it. I don't like being in anyone's debt."

Dean rolled his eyes. "So pulling up ten grand is easier for you than a simple 'thank you'?" He grabbed the money and rifled through it. "You are so damaged."

He was right. "Takes one to know one." Bela said. "Goodbye, lads."

Bela turned and left. Behind her, she heard Sam say, "She's got style, you gotta give her that."

Smiling, Bela got into her car and zoomed off to the nearest pub. She bought a huge round of drinks for everyone, got badly drunk despite the early hour, and sloped home only to collapse into bed, passed out until the next morning.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

A few weeks passed. Bela found herself wondering what the Winchesters were up to frequently. Her informant Rich had a few tidbits for her, telling her about the latest exploits of the Winchester brothers, but he seemed a lot colder after her snub and Bela decided she didn't care. She could get her own information.

Bela's seemingly never-ending funds of money were dwindling worryingly, so reluctantly, she fell back to old habits. A rich retired businessman was being blackmailed by a gang. She went in to the gang's hideout, guns blazing, fired randomly and wounded several, ensuring that they would leave her client alone.

It was rather a cheap stunt. No paranormal involved, bo-ring. But she got a hefty sum from the client, and she was feeling pretty pleased with herself as she walked back to the place where she'd parked her car.

It was nighttime. The moon was high in the sky. Having just attacked a whole group of gangsters and won, Bela was feeling pretty on top of things and therefore was entirely surprised by the African American man who stepped out of the shadows in front of her.

Bela started back in surprise; she'd thought she was alone in this relatively lonely place at night. "It's rude to sneak up on people," she snapped.

"Bela Talbot." The man said, stating a fact. Bela frowned.

"You have me at a disadvantage," Bela returned, cool as you please. "I don't know who you are."

"Gordon Walker."

Hunter. Unstable. Dangerous. Fanatic. These were all words that jumped out at her as Bela remembered everything everyone had ever said to her about Gordon Walker. "I've heard of you." It seemed that everyone in the circle of American hunters had heard of the vampire specialist. "Heard you were in prison."

Gordon didn't smile—he bared his teeth. "Got out."

Figures. Bela had yet to meet a hunter who was incapable of springing himself from prison. "Released early on good behavior?"

She turned and opened her car door, reaching into the glove compartment all casual-like… and was stopped when Gordon held up her gun.

"You looking for this?"

Bela closed her eyes for a brief second. Gordon removed the clip.

"I know you were just in Massachusetts, and I know you were with the Winchester boys. Tell me where they are."

Her first instinct was to agree. There was no love lost between her and the Winchesters. But… they'd saved her life… and besides, she didn't want Gordon to think she was giving in. "I don't think I know."

Gordon pulled a gun out of his shirt, significantly larger than her own. "Why don't you think a little harder?"

Bela eyed the gun and then looked him straight in the eye, banishing her fear to the very back of her mind. He wouldn't shoot her. Not yet, anyway. He needed her. "Put that down." she snapped. "What's so pressing about finding the boys, anyway?"

"Sam Winchester's the Antichrist," Gordon said matter-of-factly. Bela was suddenly struck by the thought that any passer-by happening to hear their conversation would think that they were both round the twist.

"I'd heard something like that…" Bela said, who had, and honestly thought it was stuff and nonsense. Antichrist indeed! Sam Winchester was more bleeding heart than anyone she'd ever met.

"It's true," Gordon seemed pleased that she agreed with him. Bela hastily put him straight.

"…from my good friend, the Easter bunny, who'd heard it from the tooth fairy. Are you off your meds?" Bela said, her accent becoming crisper than usual, as it did when she was in the middle of a verbal banter.

Gordon Walker's smug expression turned into a hard glare. "The world hangs in the balance. So you go ahead and be a smartass, but tell me where they are, or I shoot."

And he probably meant it, too. But the thing about Bela was that the more edgy she got on the inside, the cooler she appeared on the outside. "Gordon, you and I don't know each other very well, so let me tell you a little something about me. I don't respond well to threats, but you make me an offer, and I think you'll find me highly cooperative."

Gordon glared. "Okay." He lowered the gun and for one wild moment Bela thought he'd actually agree without protest. "How about…" he raised the gun again and Bela's foolish hope was dashed. Oh well. "You tell me where they are, or I kill you right now?"

Heart hammering, Bela looked at the gun. She could always tell Gordon where the Winchesters were and walk away unscathed, her pride be damned. But she saw an opportunity here, an opportunity for profit. And with Bela, greed wins out over cowardice any day. "Kill me. Good luck finding Sam and Dean."

Gordon paused. Bela realised that he was considering it. _Good_. "I can wrangle up three grand." Gordon said reluctantly.

Bela small smirk turned into a scowl. "I don't get out of bed for three grand."

Gordon's scowl became even deeper until he looked positively frightening. "You…"

Bela was just wondering what to do when Gordon lowered the gun. She was considering taking his offer of three grand, better than nothing, just when she spotted a small cloth bag hanging at his waist. _That isn't_… her eyes lit up. It _was_!

"Scratch that. Give me the mojo bag, and we'll call it even."

Gordon looked down at the bag, and then back at her. "Oh, hell no. This thing's a century old. It's..."

"Priceless. Believe me, I know. Now. How badly do you want the Winchesters?"

She could almost see the cogs in his head going. The thoughts whirling round as he did the maths. Finally, an expression of deep disgust on his face, Gordon tossed her the bag. Bela caught it deftly. Smiling, she took out her cell phone and dialed Dean's number.

"Hello, Dean?"

"Bela? What do you want?"

"Um, where are you?"

There was a pause on the other end. "Why?"

"Dean, there's something… you saved my life, I never thanked you properly. That ten thousand wasn't quite enough for a life. I need to talk to you in person. Where are you?" The lies slipped off her tongue easily.

Bela switched her phone to speaker, and Gordon heard loud and clear as Dean told her.

Slipping the mojo bag into her pocket, Bela got into her car as Gordon glowered darkly at her.

"I gave you what you wanted, didn't I?" Bela said as she started the engine. Gordon gave her back her gun through her wound-down window.

"Cost me a fortune, though," he grumbled.

"Say hello to the Winchester boys for me," Bela said as she drove off.

She did feel a tiny bit bad as Gordon left. The Winchesters had saved her life. Still, she'd repaid them… they were even.

A little voice inside her said, _you told Dean that ten thousand wasn't enough for a life. You weren't just saying that to get him to tell you where he was. You know it's true._

"Shut up." Bela said sharply.

First talking to her cat, now to herself. She didn't like the condition of her metal psyche.


	15. Chapter 15

**Hi guys! I am so sorry for the long delay. I wanted to update a few weeks ago, but for some reason there was a glitch in and I couldn't upload any more chapters to this story for a long time. It's recently been fixed, so... here we are!**

Chapter Fifteen

A day passed. Bela sold the bag of mojo easily. Three million—three _million_. Add that to the sizeable sum that rich businessman had given her for scaring off the gang and she had enough for what would be an ordinary person's lifetime.

But Bela Talbot was no ordinary person. Still, it was a lot of cash, and she had time to enjoy.

She did feel a tiny pang when she thought of the Winchesters. They were good guys—she knew that.

"Well, I'm not." Bela said. "I don't give a damn."

"Sorry, honey?" the bartender looked over the counter at her.

"Nothing," Bela said, finished her shot of whiskey, and put the money on the counter. "Keep the change."

"You're not driving, are you? You had quite a bit to drink," the bartender called after her.

Bela laughed. "Trust me. For me, that was barely a drop. I'll be fine." She left the pub—she was spending an awful lot of time in pubs nowadays, good thing she didn't need to worry about liver problems in her old age—and made her way to her car.

She was just driving off when her phone rang.

"Lugosi," she said.

"Hi, Bela," Dean said.

Bela couldn't help feeling relieved that he was still alive. Not that she had been worried, of course. Not that she had cared. Still… "Hello, Dean."

"Question for you. When you called me yesterday, it wasn't to thank me for saving your ass, was it?"

Bela sighed inwardly. It was time like these when being forthright was the best course of action. "Gordon Walker paid me to tell him where you were."

"Excuse me?" Dean's voice was trembling with barely suppressed rage.

Faking nonchalance, Bela said, "Well, he had a gun on me. What else was I supposed to do?"

"I don't know!" Dean flared up. "Maybe pick up the phone and tell us that a raging psychopath was dropping by!"

That honestly had never even crossed Bela's mind. "I did fully intend to call. I just got a bit sidetracked."

"He tried to kill us!" Dean said hotly.

"I'm sorry," Bela said. "I didn't realise it was such a big deal. After all, there are two of you and one of him."

"There were two of them."

Bela looked down briefly. She hadn't meant for that to happen. She didn't particularly like the Winchesters, and she didn't really care, but she didn't really want them to die, either.

When Dean spoke again, his voice was lower, and it was menacing. It sent a shiver down Bela's spine. A bad sort of shiver. "Bela, if we make it out of this alive, the first thing I'm gonna do is kill you."

His voice told her that he meant it. Bela suddenly felt cold, even though it was hot and stuffy inside her car. "You're not serious."

"Listen to my voice and tell me if I'm serious," Dean said flatly. There was a click and he hung up. Bela looked at her phone.

She'd listened to his voice, and he was serious.

Bela drove home and went inside, feeling a bit agitated. She flung herself down into her sofa.

"Not that I can't take care of myself," she muttered at last. "I can handle him. Anyway, he probably won't even try anything. That Dean Winchester, he's all talk…"

He wasn't all talk. Dean Winchester had meant what he said. But it made her feel better to say it aloud.

"Even if he does, what's a couple extra months downstairs, anyway? No difference to me…"

It had been some time since Bela had thought of hell. She'd developed a method of pushing it out of her thoughts whenever it threatened to make a reappearance. Now she shivered, and it had nothing to do with the air-con.

"All talk…"

Bela brushed her teeth, changed into something more comfortable, and went to bed with a gun under her pillow and leaving Delilah with strict instructions to wake her up if she heard anything. The rational part of Bela knew that the Siamese cat couldn't understand her, but something in Bela still firmly believed that Delilah could understand every word.

"Mew," Delilah assured her, and sloped off to sit on Bela's most comfortable sofa.

"Good girl," Bela said, and collapsed onto her bed.

Bela dreamed of a little girl who sat on a swing. _I could take care of them for you… and it won't even cost you anything… for ten whole years_.

She dreamed of herself, her fourteen-year-old self, sitting next to the girl on the swing and listening to her every word, drinking it in, thinking of all the possibilities.

"Don't do it, Abby!" Bela shouted, but she couldn't hear her own voice and neither did the crossroads demon and her teenage self. "Abby, it's not worth it. Better to let him hurt you and die free. Better to stay Abby Moncrieff than to become Bela Talbot."

Abby was nodding. _Yes. I'll do it. I'll do anything if you'll stop him from doing what he does._

"Abby, no."

The crossroads demon smiled, leaned forward.

"Please, Abby, if you only knew what I knew."

The deal was made.

"What have you done?" Bela moaned, backing away from the swings. "Abby, I warned you, don't do it."

Then she heard growling, felt acrid breath on her ear. Petrified, she turned around and stared into the hideous face of a hellhound. Bela knew that humans couldn't see hellhounds, but somehow, in this dream, she could. And it was terrifying.

Bela screamed as the hellhound sank its teeth into her arm. The floor crumbled beneath them and she felt a wave of heat hit her and saw burning orange flames from below. Hellfire.

She screamed and struggled but the hellhound wouldn't release its hold as it dragged her down, and down…

And the worst part was, Bela could still vaguely see Abby sitting with the crossroads demon on the playground swings, talking.

"Abby, help!"

The demon turned and smiled at her, her eyes flashing red. That was the last thing Bela saw as the hellhound pulled her into the fiery depths…

…and then the dream changed.

Bela was standing in her old bedroom, sitting on her old bed and staring at the door, the door that had its lock smashed so that she'd never be able to lock him out.

She heard a step on the creaking floor outside and the old terror fluttered in her chest.

A figure stepped into her room. Bela thought she should run, but it was just like last time—physically capable of escape or fighting back, but mentally helpless. "Go away," she whispered, but she took care to whisper too softly for her tormenter to hear, because she was scared that that might just make him angry.

"Go away? Oh, Abigail. You know better than that," and the figure stepped out of the shadows. It wasn't her father. It was the demon.

"You!" Bela jumped to her feet. "I'm dreaming, aren't I?"

"In a manner of speaking. I suppose it's true that you are lying down and sleeping right now, but unlike dreams, this is real." The crossroads demon sat down on her bed. "You've only a few weeks left, you know?"

"Believe me when I say, 'I know'," Bela said tersely.

"I've come to offer you a way out," the demon replied.

"You offered me a way out last time," Bela responded. "Look where that got me. No. I don't want to talk to you anymore. Just go away."

The demon's eyes flashed red. "What more do you have to lose? Worried you'll end up even more dead?"

There was a brief silence. "Fine. I'm listening."

"Have you heard of the Colt?" the demon asked.

"The legendary gun that can kill anything. Yes. Why?"

"We want it. Get it for us, and we'll release your soul." The demon said.

"How am I supposed to find it?" Bela whispered.

The demon stood up. "I'll leave you to figure that out. Remember, Abby—Bela. Get us the Colt and we'll let you out of your deal."

Bela woke up with a start.


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

"What? Help you?"

Bela paced her flat, Delilah sitting on her sofa and watching her mistress stamp around the room and pressing the phone so hard into her ear that it was in danger of sticking there.

"Bela, you sold us out, it's the least you could do to make it up. I mean, come on."

"And African dream-root? Why?"

"Bela, it doesn't matter. We'll pay you. That's all you really care about, isn't it?"

Bela smirked slightly. "Yes. It is. But, Dean, the last time we spoke, you did tell me that you'd kill me the next time you saw me. Remember?"

There was a pause on the other end. Then Dean said in his most charming voice, "Well, you know me. I shoot my mouth off at the best of times. Obviously I won't kill you if you help us."

"I wouldn't count on it, Dean."

"Bela, come on," Dean's voice took on a tone of urgency. "It's Bobby. He's in trouble and we need the dream-root to solve it. We'll pay you, alright?"

"Oh, if it's _Bobby_, then of _course_ I'll do all I can to help."

"For real?" Dean perked up like a hopeful dormouse.

"No. Bye, Dean." Bela hung up before he had a chance to reply.

She heated up a microwave meal for a late supper and picked at it. She wasn't really hungry. She was about to toss it in the bin when her phone rang again.

_Can't he take no for an answer?_ Without looking at the caller ID, Bela pressed the little green button on her phone and said rapidly, "I said no, and I meant no, go crawling to someone else…"

"Bela?" Rich sounded hurt.

"What? Oh! Rich? Sorry, I thought you were… never mind, it's not important. What is it?"

"The location of the Colt. I've found it."

"Excellent. Where is it?"

"With the Winchesters."

Mixed emotions ran through Bela. Relief, because she had been beginning to despair completely of the seemingly impossible task of locating the Colt for the demon. Frustration, because the Winchesters were forces to be reckoned with and she'd rather the Colt was with some lesser hunter than with them. And anticipation, because she suddenly knew just how it to get it from them.

"Smashing. Goodbye."

Bela hung up. Shivers of excitement ran through her. This could save her life. She had a fighting chance again. She'd long accepted her fate, but for a moment she felt fifteen years old again, demanding that Humphrey train her so that she could fight for her life.

She put on her black trench coat and went out. It was an easy matter to track Dean's motel room using her cell phone—she had a lot of modifications to her cell phone that allowed her to do things like that, which was nice—and she disregarded every traffic law as she made her way there. She had a stop to make along the way, though. One of her contacts lived nearby, and Bela was pretty sure he'd have enough African dream-root to spare. It was late, but she was certain he'd be up.

An hour later, Bela was at the door of the Winchesters. She paused outside briefly. It would be suspicious to change her mind so completely. She needed a story.

Dean had said Bobby was in trouble, hadn't he? Bela could use that to her advantage. She rang the bell.

It creaked open a few inches and a green eye peered at her through the crack. She peered back. Dean opened the door fully.

"Bela. As I live and breathe," Dean said, and let her in.

Bela entered the squalid little room. "You called me, remember?"

"I remember you turning me down," Dean said, shutting and locking the door behind her.

"Well, I'm just full of surprises," Bela returned, and glanced at Sam. He looked a bit… what was the word? Awkward? Bela shrugged it off.

"Hey, Bela. What's going on?" Sam said in a strained voice. Bela ignored him and turned to Dean, taking out a jar from her bag.

"I brought you your African dream-root. Nasty stuff, not easy to come by." It had been pretty easy for her, with all her contacts and strings to be pulled, but an ordinary hunter probably would have had a lot of trouble getting it. She hoped Dean realised that.

Bela put her bag on top of the telly and started unbuttoning her trench coat. It was hot in their motel room.

"Why the sudden change of heart?" Dean demanded.

"What? I can't do you a little favour every now and again?" Bela responded, knowing full well that Dean wouldn't leave it at that. She took off her coat and threw it down on the back of one of the chairs.

Dean was still breathing down her neck. "Come on, I wanna know what the strings are before you attach them."

Bela exhaled. "You said this was for Bobby Singer, right?"

Dean nodded, still wary, wondering where this was going.

"Well, I'm doing it for him, not you," Bela said.

"Bobby?" Dean demanded. "Why?"

Bela turned to face him. "He saved my life once. In Flagstaff."

Sam and Dean exchanged a look. Bela couldn't read it. She supposed that that was the advantage of siblings—they knew each other so well that they could communicate wordlessly. Must be nice to be that close to someone.

"I messed up and he saved me, okay?" Bela said, faking vehemence. "You satisfied?"

Dean looked up from his minute examination of the African dream-root. "Maybe."

"So when do we go on this little magical mystery tour?" she asked. Not that she was really looking forward to wandering inside Bobby Singer's head… all hunters had such messed-up psyches. Much like her own.

"Oh, you're not going anywhere. I don't trust you enough to let you in my car, much less Bobby's head. No offense." Dean shot.

"None taken," Bela said, relieved.

Dean crossed the room, walking over to his safe and flicking on the lights. Bela felt her heart beat faster. He had to be keeping the Colt in that… just had to be.

Dean put the jar inside and closed it again. She heard a click as he locked it. No matter.

"It's two AM," she called, pretending to be annoyed. "Where am I supposed to go?"

Dean turned back towards her. "Get a room. Ah, they got the Magic Fingers, a little Casa Erotica on pay-per-view. You'll love it."

Ha-ha. Very droll. "You…"

Bela bit off her comment. She'd get him back on that when she nicked the Colt from right under his nose. She grabbed her bag and her coat and left, slamming the door.

Just before she left, she heard Sam call after her, "Nice to see—seeing you—"

_Weird_, Bela thought to herself, and walked off.

Get a room? Casa Erotica? Not a chance. Bela went to a pub.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

A few days later, Bela was wondering if the Winchesters had gotten lost wandering around in Bobby's dreams when she got a call from Dean.

"Dean?"

"Bela. Um. You can speak with the spirits, right?"

"One of my many talents, yes."

"Good. We need your help." Dean's voice sounded gruffly reluctant. Bela hadn't been forgiven for her earlier betrayal—it was desperation that prompted this. Bela was pleased.

"Oh my! Will wonders never cease!"

"Shut up!" Dean said angrily. "Shut up and listen to me, will you!"

Bela, who was sitting on one of the sofas in her flat stroking her cat, scowled. "Aren't we in a foul mood."

"We need you to use your spirit contacts to find Jeremy Frost. He's alive."

"Oh, a chap named Jeremy Frost who is un-deceased. That really narrows it down. How am I supposed to find him?"

"You're the spirit-thief. Ask around, pull a couple strings, do whatever it is thieving immoral chicks such as yourself do to get intel. Jeremy Frost's the one who messed with Bobby's head and trapped him in a dream-world-thing. He's insane, got this condition that doesn't let him dream, so he drank African Dream-Root to let him dream and ended up being able to control dreams… anyway, he's crazy. Meet me in the motel in five." There was a click and Dean hung up.

Bela stared at the phone, irritated beyond words. _She_ didn't take orders from _Dean Winchester_. Was he off his meds? But still, she would be at his motel to find Jeremy Frost. She needed to Colt to live, and she'd shelf her pride for that.

She arrived at the motel as promised with her Ouija board and rang the doorbell. Sam opened the door. "Bela. We were just leaving."

"So I'll be alone in the motel?" she said, hopeful.

Dean appeared behind Sam. "No." he said sharply. "Like we'd leave you alone in our centre of dwelling. Bobby's here."

Bela shrugged. Didn't matter to her. She'd find a way to get the Colt sooner or later. "Fine. Be on your merry way. I'll see what I can see." She pushed past the Winchesters and put the Ouija board on the table.

Bobby was on his laptop, deep in research mode. He glanced up when Bela entered. "Bela," he said darkly.

"Bobby Singer," Bela returned, and set up her Ouija board and tarot cards. They both worked in abject silence, but Bela knew that Bobby was shooting her frequent glances to make sure that she didn't try anything funny. Bela ignored him, but feeling his eyes boring holes into the back of her skull didn't help her concentration.

The hours trickled past slowly. Bela ground her teeth in frustration. No spirit seemed to know anything about Jeremy Frost. Either that, or they simply didn't want to tell her. The intentions of spirits were hard to read sometimes.

Finally Bobby fished out his cell phone and dialed Dean's number, probably to give the Winchester boys a status update. Bela took the opportunity to rest, scrubbing a fist across her eyes and suppressing a yawn.

"Strip club was a bust, huh?" Bobby said into the phone. He sighed. "That was our last lead." A pause, and then Bobby scowled venomously. "Don't yell at me, boy, I'm working my ass off here!" Then he looked mollified, his eyes softening slightly. "Well, who ain't?" He turned to Bela. "What do you got, Bela?"

Bela ignored the terrible grammar. "Sorry. Sometimes the spirit world's in a chatty mood and sometimes it isn't."

Bobby said into the phone, "She's got nothing." He flipped the phone closed, and exhaled again. Bela turned back to her work reluctantly.

Bobby walked over to her. "Let me ask you somethin'."

Bela looked up.

"What are you doin' helping us?"

Bela felt a flicker of irritation. It would be harder to convince Bobby of her harmless intentions like she had the Winchesters, as Bobby would know that nothing really of significance had happened in Flagstaff. Still, she gave it a try. Smiling slightly, she said, "Bobby, I'm surprised you don't remember."

Bobby squinted at her, not understanding. Bela prompted him. "Flagstaff?"

Bobby frowned slightly, thinking. Finally he said, "Oh. Yeah. Right. Flagstaff."

Bela could see that he wasn't really convinced, but it would do for now. She continued with her work.

It was getting late and the Winchesters still hadn't returned. Bela glanced back at Bobby. He was nodding off, his laptop's screensaver flashing across the screen. Bela waited a few minutes, but he didn't wake up, and she decided that it was safe to act.

She crossed over to the safe that she had observed previously. Her hands were trembling with excitement. Behind the door of that safe was the ticket that would lead to her freedom. All that stood in her way was that flimsy combination lock.

Bela crouched down and pressed her ear against the lock. She fumbled with it, turning the knob this way and that, straining her ears, until she heard a tiny _click_. She did this three more times until the lock finally opened.

She pulled open the door of the safe. Inside were their fake IDs, a few fake credit cards and one very real Colt. Bela had never seen anything as beautiful as that battered old gun. Reverently, she took it from the safe and tucked it under her trench coat. Carefully, she shut the door of the safe and locked it, took back her Ouija board and tarot cards and then left.

Her knees felt like jelly and her stomach was writhing. Bela clutched the wonderful, blessed gun to her chest and went for her car.

She started the engine, and then turned around. She started.

In the back seat was the a middle-aged man. Bela immediately knew he was a crossroads demon, but something told her he was a lot more powerful than the average red-eye.

"Very good, Bela. I must say, you dealt with that little problem much more quickly than I expected." He spoke with a British accent, like hers. "May I?"

Bela withdrew the Colt and handed it over without hesitation.

"I'm Crowley, by the way." He said, examining the gun. "King of the Cossroads."

A shiver ran up Bela's spine. "You. You're the one who… holds my deal." Her voice ended up sounding a lot more frightened than she had meant it to be. This man—demon—was singlehandedly responsible for ruining thousands of lives and sending thousands of souls to hell. Hers included.

"Actually, no. That would be Lilith. But anyway, this all looks good." He pocketed the Colt.

"So… I'm free? I won't go to hell in a few weeks?" Bela hardly dared to believe it. For so long she'd lived with that awful shadow hanging over her head, for so long she'd had the terror of hell constantly at the back of her mind, to think that she was finally, completely, wonderfully free…

But no. Life was never that simple.

"Well… not quite." Crowley said.

"W-what? No. _No_!" Bela gripped the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles turned white. She felt something hot on her cheek and realised that it was a tear. She blinked and more tears fell down her face—tears of frustration, anger and pure terror. "No! I did what you wanted. Let me out of my deal. You have to!"

"I don't have to do anything," Crowley said smoothly. "I'm the King of the Crossroads, haven't I said? Don't cry, silly child, there's still a way out. I'm just tweaking the terms a bit. In addition to this… lovely Colt," he patted his pocket. "I want you to kill Sam Winchester."

"W-why?"

"That doesn't matter. Kill Sam and I'll let you out of your deal. Understand?" Crowley leaned forward and patted Bela's shoulder.

"How do I know you're not lying?"

"You don't. But you'll do it, because this is the only chance you've got." And Crowley vanished.

Bela put her forehead on the steering wheel and sobbed.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen

Bela wasn't quite sure where she was driving to until she'd already arrived there. She'd passed the chapel many times and never spared it a glance, but now she parked the car outside and paused outside the Sacred Heart Chapel doors. It wasn't a magnificent church, quite small really, with no stained-glass windows or anything fancy, but she went in anyway.

She was quite certain that there wouldn't be anyone there at this time of night, and so she was surprised when she saw a figure kneeling just in front of the altar. Hearing her footsteps, the priest straightened and turned to her. He was around fifty, with thinning hair and pale skin, but kindly brown eyes. Bela trusted him instinctively, and that was saying a lot. She never trusted anyone, instinctively or no.

"You're out late, my dear," he said, his face registering nothing but concern. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

"No." Bela said shortly. She turned and started to go—she hadn't counted on the priest actually being here. She'd just wanted a quiet place to think, and a church fitted that description.

She could sense that he was slightly taken-aback, but that didn't stop him from placing a hand on her shoulder to stop her from leaving. At his touch, she jumped nearly out of her skin and snapped her arm away.

"It's clear something has you upset. Sometimes you just need to talk to someone, even someone who you think can't possibly help."

Bela stopped and glanced up at the ceiling of the church. She used to come to places like these to pray. She used to believe in the higher power and that He was this wonderful, benevolent entity who watched over all the little children. She didn't believe that anymore, but there was still something about the church that… comforted wasn't the right word, but she didn't want to leave just yet.

"Is there redemption for everyone, Father?" she blurted suddenly.

The priest answered without hesitation. "Yes."

"How do you know? Has He told you? I think not."

"I know because it's true." The priest said simply, no pretention, no hint of offense at her overly brusque attitude. "I know that there's always salvation. Whatever you've done, you can have forgiveness if you ask."

Bela looked away. "Tell that to the demon who holds my soul in both his hands."

"I… what?" The priest was suitably confused.

"Forget it," Bela snapped. "You don't know anything. You say you know because it's true, but you don't know _anything_." She turned on her heel and swept out of the church. _That was an utter and complete waste of time_, she thought crossly as she jumped back into her car and floored the pedal.

It was raining. The weather matched her mood. It was the sort of scene you expected to see in a movie, the main character cruising down a highway in the rain, at the low of her life, feeling desperate. But by the end of the film that character would have had a happy ending. Bela's ending would be hell. Excellent.

_Bela, this isn't it. You still have a chance. Sam._

Bela swerved violently. It was lucky she was the only one on the road.

_No. I won't do it. There's no point. Crowley's never letting me go. I could get into a spaceship and fetch him the moon and he still won't let me out of my deal. He's a demon. I'm through with dealing with them._

Bela's car sped through the empty, wet streets.

_You'll do it because you have to. It's a chance. You've always fought against the odds, Abby. Even though you knew you'd lose. This is your nature. You will do it._

And Bela knew she would.

Besides, she had a bigger problem on her hands at the moment—if such a thing could exist. The Winchesters were after her. And they were going to kill her. She'd have to deal with them before she even thought of murdering Sam.

"Murder's such a strong word. Before you dispose of Sam." Bela said aloud.

An idea suddenly presented itself to her. They were probably tracking her down right now. Where she went, they would follow. It was a fail-proof formula for traps. And if she wasn't very much mistaken, they were wanted dearly by the police.

She grinned and made her way to the nearest motel.

-break-

It was shabby, but no matter. She wouldn't be staying there anyway. Bela left a few wigs lying about the place—it might seem odd, but she remembered her first meeting with the Winchesters, in which she'd concealed her long blond hair with a short black wig. They'd remember wigs as her trademark. There could be no mistake that this was her room.

When she was satisfied, she left the room and went back to her car. She got out her cell phone and made a call.

"Hello? Is this FBI? Listen carefully. I'm only going to say this once. In a few hours two of your most wanted criminals are going to be at room 245 of the Splendour Motel. Sam and Dean Winchester." she paused. "That's not important. I just know. I have insider information, okay? And don't bother tracing my call, it's scrambled. Just get there and arrest the buggers." She hung up and drove on.

She longed to stop for a rest at some pub, but it was vital that she get away quickly. Hours passed before Bela got out her phone again and dialed the motel room number. She didn't really have to do this, but she remembered the time when Dean had called her and told her in a cold, matter-of-fact voice that he would kill her. It would be her pleasure to do the same.

The other end picked up, but there was no response, no tentative, "Hello?" Bela decided to go first.

"Dean? Sweetie, are you there?"

Dean's voice, terse with controlled anger. "Where are you?"

"Two states away by now." Bela said, rather smugly. She was thrilled at how well her plan had worked out.

"Where?" Dean demanded.

"Where's our usual quippy banter? I miss it."

She could hear heavy breathing. "I want it back, Bela." Dean said, his voice quiet with menace. "Now."

"Your little pistol, you mean? Sorry, I can't at the moment." Bela said pleasantly.

"You understand how many people are gonna die if you do this?" Dean said, a trace of urgency in his voice now. He really cared. Poor, misguided lad.

"What exactly is it that you think I plan to do with it?" Bela asked.

"Take the only weapon we have against an army of demons and sell it to the highest bidder." Dean said promptly.

Bela rolled her eyes. Good Lord, if only it were that simple. "You know nothing about me."

"You know I'm gonna stop you." Dean informed her.

"Tough words for a guy who can't even find me." Bela said. She accelerated, just to prove her point to an invisible audience.

"Oh, I'll find you sweetheart. You know why? Because I have absolutely nothing better to do than to track you down." He sounded so damn _smug_. Bela couldn't wait to wipe that smirk off his face. Even though she couldn't exactly see him at that moment, she could certainly imagine.

"That's where you're wrong. You're about to be quite occupied." There was silence. "Did you really think I wouldn't take precautions?"

Just then, there was a _bang_ on the other end. Bela imagined a door had been slammed open. And then, the glorious noise of someone shouting, "Hands in the air!"

Bela hung up and wriggled in her seat with pure delight. She sure showed them.

Now to kill Sam Winchester.


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

It didn't really surprise Bela to learn, about a few days later, that the Winchesters had escaped from prison. It had only been a temporary solution, after all. What did surprise her was the manner in which they had escaped. The entire police station had been leveled—it was on the news. She was pretty certain that the boys hadn't done that. Something else had.

Still, she couldn't wonder about the mystery of the Winchesters. She needed to get cracking.

"Indeed you do, Bela."

Bela, who had been sitting on the sofa in a sleazy motel drinking wine and researching on her laptop, swore badly as the glass slipped out of her grip and smashed on the floor.

Bela jumped up and fixed the crossroads demon who had appeared behind her with a glare. It wasn't Crowley this time. It was another one of those pretty young women with scarlet eyes. This demon was tall and curvy and blond, dressed in a loose T-shirt and low-slung jeans.

"What, I'm too small-fry for the boss to visit himself? He sends his underling instead? I'm insulted." Bela said, recovering quickly.

"Funny ha-ha." The demon said in a bored tone. "You need to get movin'. The boss wants me to give you this." She handed over a grubby slip of paper.

Bela squinted at it. "Crowley's giving me his number? Sorry, pet, he's a little too old for me. You go right back and tell him to find girlfriends his own age, okay?"

"Oh ho ho. _Not_. Crowley says to get a move on. He says that if you don't find them in three days he's gonna take you down to hell himself and watch you burn. You and Dean both. And he'll like it."

"Dean made a deal?"

"None of your business. Small-fry."

Bela swallowed. She kept trying not to think of how much longer she had left to live because she knew it wasn't long. How did those years turn into days? How could it have gone by so quickly?

"Fine. But what are the digits for?"

"When you find the Winchesters, call him to tell him."

"Why can't you just—?"

"Hey, I don't make the rules, sister, I just work there. Crowley says so, so you do it. Got that?" The demon scowled. "Now I can actually get back to my _real_ work." She vanished.

Bela sighed. She had a plan that just might work, but the risk was equally great. She'd _let_ the Winchesters find her. Just sit pretty until they came waltzing in. And then she'd kill Sam.

It wasn't the most thorough plan, but she didn't have enough time to think up anything else. It was far too passive a plan for her liking, but it was the best she could do.

-break-

Bela stayed in the motel room for a night and a day before she started to get fidgety. Honestly, it shouldn't take the Winchesters _this_ long to find her. They were a little off their game. If they didn't soon, Bela was going to shoot herself in the head. At least there would be no more waiting.

Well, maybe she wasn't _really_ going to kill herself. But still.

She was starving and hadn't allowed herself to buy food for the whole time, as it would mean leaving the motel room, but soon she decided that she simply had to have something to eat. She'd only be out ten minutes, it wouldn't make a difference.

As usual, she was dead wrong and when she came back Dean Winchester was waiting for her.

She'd only just opened the door when Dean grabbed her and shoved her against the wall, pinning her there roughly. There was a fervour in his eyes. _It's fine, he won't do anything, he's the good chap, remember?_ Still, Bela couldn't stop her heart from hammering with fear. And to make matters worse, Sam wasn't even there. This whole endeavor was for nothing.

"Where's the Colt?" Dean asked, his voice low and rough. He'd had enough.

"Dean…" Bela started.

"No extra words." Dean snapped at her.

"It's long gone," Bela said, struggling to keep her voice even. "Across the world by now."

Bela saw surprise and horror flash briefly on Dean's face, to be quickly suppressed. "You're lying."

"I'll call the buyer. Speak Farsi?" Bela rummaged inside her coat, pretending to look for her phone, but reaching for her gun. Dean grabbed her. Bela's eyes widened—surely Dean _couldn't_ be… he wasn't exactly a gentleman, but he was a good guy… "What the hell are you…?"

Dean seized the gun from her. "Don't flatter yourself." He pocketed her gun, flicked on the lights, and backed up a few paces, aiming his gun at her.

"Don't move." He started to search her drawers.

"I told you, I don't have it."

"Oh yeah, I'm definitely gonna take your word for it." he said sarcastically, still searching furiously.

He turned his back on her as he started looking through another set of drawers. Ready to seize the opportunity, Bela started inching her way towards the door. Then she let out a gasp as a resounding _bang_ echoed through the room. She glanced upwards; barely two inches above her head, a bullet was embedded in the door.

"Don't move." Dean repeated.

Bela sighed. This was getting completely out of hand. Dean got down on his hands and knees, dragged her suitcase out from under her bed, and started going through it.

"It's gone. Get on a plane if you must. Track down the buyer. You might catch up to him, eventually." Bela said.

Dean got up and pointed his gun at her. She saw the realisation in his face—he knew that she was telling the truth, at last. Bela wasn't sure how she should feel about that.

"Are you going to kill me?" Bela managed to keep the quaver from her voice.

"Oh, yeah." Dean said.

Bela's stomach clenched. "You're not the cold-blooded type."

Dean snorted. "You mean like you? It's true. See, I couldn't imagine killing my parents."

Bela fought back a gasp. How did he—oh, of course he knew. He was a good boy, he'd done his homework. She thought she'd covered up her tracks well, but evidently not well enough. Still, what difference did it make, really? "I don't know what you're talking…"

Dean interrupted. "Yes, you do. You were what—fourteen? Your folks died in some shady car accident, police suspected a slashed brake line, but it was all too crispy to tell. Cut to little Bela. I'm sorry, Abby. Inheriting millions."

There he was, so self-righteous, convinced he knew everything there was to know about that story. Bela's evil and unscrupulous, I'm good and honourable and a hero, no and yes, black and white. Simple. The idiot.

"How did you even…"

Again, Dean cut her off mid-sentence. "Doesn't matter."

Bela ground her teeth. Fine. He wanted simple, he wanted black-and-white, fine. She'd omit the shades of grey for him. He wanted a villain, pure evil? She'd given him one. "They were lovely people, and I killed them. And I got rich. I can't be bothered to give a damn. Just like I don't care what happens to you." Saying it felt bittersweet, but she'd never tell Dean the truth. Never.

Dean jumped at her and pushed her against the wall. For one mad moment she thought he was going to strangle her with her bare hands, but he didn't. Something caught Bela's eye; a piece of paper sticking out of Dean's pocket. On an impulse, she grabbed it. He didn't notice a thing.

"You make me sick." he told her.

"Likewise." Bela said quietly.

Dean let her go, backed up, and aimed the gun. He was going to kill her. He was supposed to be the good guy. It wasn't fair. Bela closed her eyes, waiting for the searing pain of the shot and then the fire of hell, too tired to fight anymore.

The shot didn't come. Bela opened her eyes; Dean had lowered his gun.

"You're not worth it." he said acidly, pushed her out of the way, and left.

Bela breathed out in relief, and then opened the crumpled piece of paper she had stolen from Dean. Her heart gave a leap. It was a motel receipt. Her hand still shaking slightly, she grabbed her cell phone and dialled in Crowley's number.

"It worked. He found me."

"Excellent. You have Sam, then?" Crowley said, his voice eager.

"No, Sam wasn't with him. But I know where they are."

"Marvelous. Get there and kill them."


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

Bela looked up at the door and frowned. The Devil's Shoestring that she had taped to the top of the door had been dislodged when Dean yanked the door open. She stood on a chair and righted it, and then came down.

She was so close—all she had to do was go to their motel room and shoot them. Then she would be free. Finally. Bela tucked her gun into her jacket and left for their motel.

No car ride had ever seemed longer.

She was speeding like there was no tomorrow by the time she got there. She glanced at her watch—11:52. If she didn't kill Sam in ten minutes she was going to hell. But she wasn't. In ten minutes, she would be free.

She charged up into the corridor, found the right door, and stooped down to pick the lock. Her hands were shaking so badly that she could barely to it, but finally there was a click and she was in. Her heart pounding, she opened the door and slipped in, closing the door behind her.

It was dark, but she could see enough to make out the two figures in their beds. She cocked the gun and aimed it.

_Well, this is it, lads. Well played. I'm terribly sorry about this, really. If it only could be different. But sadly, it can't. Goodbye_.

Bela fired. Then she turned to the other bed and fired again. It was done. It was really done. She'd really succeeded. She wasn't going to hell. Her heart leaping, she approached the bed and fought down a wild desire to laugh. Ten years of fear and terror and she got out of her deal four minutes before the hellhounds came her for.

She yanked back the covers and stumbled back in pure shock.

The figures were nothing more than plastic blow-up dolls.

Bela wanted to scream, and cry, but at that moment the phone rang. Her breath catching in her throat, she picked up.

"Hiya Bela. Here's a, here's a fun fact that you may not know. I felt your hand in my pocket when you swiped that motel receipt."

Bela's heart sank. No, that old cliché didn't do it justice. Bela felt like her heart had been ripped out of her chest and been stamped on.

No, no, no. It's not fair. I've tried so hard. I've fought so hard.

"You don't understand." she said weakly.

"Oh, I'm pretty sure I understand perfectly. 'Cause you see, I noticed something interesting in your hotel room.  
Something tucked above the door. An herb. Devil's shoestring?"

Bela felt her knees start to give way, and quickly sat down on one of the beds.

Dean was still talking. "There's only one use for that—holding Hellhounds at bay. So you know what I did, I went back and took another look at your folk's obituary. Turns out they died ten years ago today. You didn't kill them. A demon did your dirty work. You made a deal, didn't you, Bela? And it's come due."

Bela felt tears pressing behind her eyes. And it won't even cost you anything... for ten whole years. Mockingly, the words echoed in her head.

"Is that why you stole the Colt, huh? Try to wiggle out of your deal? Our gun for your soul?"

"Yes." Bela sobbed.

"But stealing the Colt wasn't quite enough, I'm guessing." Dean continued.

"They changed the deal. They wanted me to kill Sam." Bela whispered.

Dean, damn him, was still talking. Really rubbing it in. "Really? Wow. Demons untrustworthy. Ha. Shocker. That's ah, kind of a tight deadline too."

Bela glanced at the clock. As she watched, it turned from 11:57 to 11:58. A whimper rose in her throat.

"Oh, look at that, almost midnight," Dean's voice gloated in her ear.

Bela let out a gasp and tears started falling down her face. She wrapped her arm around her stomach and sobbed. "Dean, listen, I need help," she wept, abandoning all pride in the face of her fate.

"Sweetheart, we are weeks past help." Dean said flatly.

"I don't I don't deserve it." Bela begged.

"You know what, you're right, you don't. But you know what the bitch of the bunch is? If you would have just come to us sooner and asked for help, we probably could have taken the Colt and saved you."

Dean really couldn't get enough of that hero act, could he? "I know, and saved yourself. I know about your deal, Dean."

A slight pause on the other end. "And who told you that?"

"A demon. They say she holds every deal." Bela said.

"She?"

"Her name's Lilith." Bela said. What the hell; better tell all. She was a minute away from death.

"Lilith? Why should I believe you?" Dean scoffed.

"You shouldn't, but it's the truth."

There was a pause, and Bela knew that Dean had realised she was telling the truth. "This can't help you, Bela. Not now. Why are you telling me this?"

"Because just maybe you can kill the bitch." Bela said. She was going to die after an ill-spent life, and this would be her only legacy. For some reason, she found it comforting. Maybe, because of her, Sam and Dean would kill Lilith. Maybe, because of her, Lilith would die and no-one else would make the same mistakes she did. No-one else would have to suffer like she would.

She was tired of being a villain. She was tired of being bad.

"I'll see you in hell." Dean said, and hung up.

Her clock turned to 12:00. In the distance, she heard hellhounds howling. Bela looked up. This was it. Finally. She'd fought for nothing. All that struggling, all those mistakes, it was all… nothing.

When the hellhounds burst open the door she didn't even grab her gun. She couldn't see them, but the stench was rancid. When invisible teeth sank into her leg and pulled her to the ground she didn't even scream. It hurt like hell, but Bela knew that in just a few seconds she was going to find out exactly what they meant.

The pain was all over now as the hellhounds fed off her hungrily. And then suddenly it stopped.

And the pain she felt then was even greater.


	21. Epilogue

Epilogue

Bela is suspended from chains. The bloody, rusty chains rope across the expanse. The air is filled with screams. Bela is suspended, her long blond hair stiff with dried blood, lank, greasy. Her skin is dirty and bruised and cut.

The demon working on her is relentless. She's been here for an eternity—or was it? Time was different here, it might be have been a century or a second—and she's never felt this kind of pain before. The demon working on her—good Lord, he's good. He must've been training long.

Bela is screaming and screaming and screaming, not stopping to take it any air. The pain excludes all else. Finally the demon pauses for a second and she dares to look up at her tormenter.

He looks familiar. She frowns. Takes a second to place him.

"Dean." She doesn't remember where she called that name up from. She doesn't remember who this creature is, except that she once knew him and that his name was Dean. In fact, she doesn't even remember her own name.

"Hello, Bela," Dean says evenly.

"Bel-a." Bela tries it out. The word sounds foreign on her tongue. "Was that my name before…"

She doesn't get a chance to finish her question because he's continuing and the pain is all-consuming. She's screaming again, not stopping, never stopping.

Forever.

~The End~

**So here's the end of Bela's unhappy story! I'd have loved to give her a vaguely happy ending, but, you know… she's the super angst-ridden character of the series. Thanks to everyone who read to the end of the story and who left reviews. I read and appreciated all of them. And a special shout-out to Roza-Belikov12, who reviewed **_**every single**_** chapter right after I posted it. You're all awesome! **


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